Lords of the Desert

Barr opens with a memorable anecdote: the retired Anthony Eden recalls, years later, what Enoch Powell once told him — «our greatest enemies in the Middle East are the Americans» — and says, «now I understand». It condenses the book's entire thesis into a sentence. The author quickly shows that Powell was not alone: the Briton Richard Crossman and the American spy Kim Roosevelt had observed the same rivalry.

The most valuable part of the introduction is the way it lays bare the economic logic of the rivalry. For Britain the region first meant guarding the route to India, and after 1947 oil revenue and the balance of payments; the belief that oil was a «wasting asset» that would run out by the end of the century pushed London towards short-term, aggressive policy. American interests were primarily commercial, which made the US more flexible: Aramco's agreement to split profits fifty-fifty with the Saudis set a precedent the British refused to follow, and set off the chain of events that led to the nationalisation of Iranian oil.

Chapter 1 opens in November 1942 with Churchill's famous speech after El Alamein — «This is not the end. It is not even the beginning of the end.» Barr draws attention to its second, less remembered part: «I have not become the King's First Minister in order to preside over the liquidation of the British Empire.» As the author shows, those defiant words were aimed not only at Roosevelt but at another American.

That American — Wendell Willkie, the Republican who lost to Roosevelt in 1940 — is the real protagonist of the chapter. Barr vividly describes his 1941 meeting with Churchill in London, his support for Lend-Lease, and his arrival in Cairo during a round-the-world trip in 1942. Willkie set out as one of Britain's strongest American supporters and returned forty-nine days later as one of its bluntest critics, having found in the British officials in Alexandria «Rudyard Kipling untainted even by the liberalism of Cecil Rhodes».

The chapter's strength lies in detail: Cairo's «Ash Wednesday», when files were burned; the 4 February 1942 incident in which Miles Lampson surrounded Abdeen Palace with tanks and forced King Farouk to back down; the comic scene in which a switchboard error put Churchill, trying to set up a secret meeting with Willkie, straight through to Roosevelt. These episodes present diplomatic history as a history of human weakness, personal grudges and chance.

The Turkish translation is fluent, but there is a notable slip in the introduction: Mohammad Mossadegh is called «Prime Minister of Iraq», when he was Prime Minister of Iran. Minor flaws aside, the opening chapters show clearly how well informed and yet how readable the book is: Barr combines archival research with a real gift for storytelling.

• Each chapter opens with a concrete scene or speech before widening to context
• Abundant quotation from diaries, letters and official papers, all sourced in the notes
• Personal relationships and comic accidents bring the diplomacy to life
• The Turkish edition contains some factual translation errors (Mossadegh as «Prime Minister of Iraq»)