In This Review

East of Malta, West of Suez: Britain's Mediterranean Crisis, 1936-1939
East of Malta, West of Suez: Britain's Mediterranean Crisis, 1936-1939
By Lawrence R. Pratt
Cambridge University Press (in cooperation with the London School of Econom, 1975, 215 pp

A good monograph with an important thesis: Britain's weakness in the strategic Mediterranean had a determining and necessarily debilitating impact on its generally hapless foreign policy before the war. "The British Empire [in the 1930s] was overextended and under-prepared, resembling a patchwork of interdependent weaknesses." Written with verve and judgment.

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