Bouverie, a young British journalist, is aware that he’s entering well-worn ground. Unlike other books about the prelude to World War II, Appeasement avoids narrowing in on a single event (Munich) or individual (Chamberlain) in favor of a more comprehensive and immersive account ... This is well-paced narrative history: intelligent, lucid, riveting — even while possessing the terrible knowledge of what happened next.
...a well-argued, lucid case for the prosecution of the appeasers, ranging from Ramsay MacDonald — prime minister when Hitler came to power in 1933 — to the Tories who opposed Winston Churchill becoming prime minister seven years later... What Bouverie re-establishes, through deft use of original sources, is that at almost every point from Hitler’s appointment as chancellor to war being declared, the policy of appeasement strengthened Nazi Germany and the Axis far more than it helped Britain or its allies.
The story has relevance in our own age as dictatorships once again confront the democracies. So it is timely to take a fresh look at what happened in the 1930s. The tale is a complex one, with many moving parts and personalities. To this tricky challenge, Tim Bouverie rises superbly. His narrative is well constructed and fluently written. He excels at capturing the atmosphere and conveying the debates in the dining clubs, drawing rooms and society playgrounds of interwar Britain. He addresses the issues with clarity of expression and judgment. There are convincing sketches of the principals along with a seasoning of entertainment from a cast of eccentric and gruesome secondary characters in the plot. The author is unsparing about the guilty parties while always careful to put them in context ... this gripping book is additionally valuable because it illuminates some eternal truths. Bad leaders hide behind public opinion; great ones lead it.
... comprises a straightforward narrative of the main events along the road to war, but it also includes welcome insights into why the policy of appeasement proved to be so disastrous ... Mr. Bouverie has been diligent in researching the sources—it appears that he visited more than 60 archives—and has an eye for the telling anecdote and aperçu ... Mr. Bouverie’s chronicle recaptures the raw, rough and occasionally vicious moments when normally polite High Society bared its teeth at the anti-appeasers for daring to oppose the central policy of their darling, Chamberlain. Even Brexit has nothing on it ... Mr. Bouverie is excellent at knocking away the appeasers’ ex post facto arguments about how the British Empire and public opinion didn’t want war in 1938, how the armed forces needed the extra year to rearm, how no one knew how untrustworthy Hitler was until he marched into Prague, and so on ... The appeasement story and its lessons are ones for the ages.
A well researched, pacy study of appeasement ... The more sensible question is: as this is an anything- but-untold story, does Bouverie retell it in an interesting, readable way? The answer is yes. This is a good example of political history of a particularly British kind: pacy, personality-driven, self-consciously writerly and ever so slightly moralistic ... We seem to be on the brink of another such moment now, which makes reading this book an odd experience. Bouverie delivers a warning of the danger of giving in to dictators – and certainly there are plenty of tin-pot demagogues around today inviting historical comparison. The problem is they are not now the only revisionists around ... I’m not sure we should be telling ourselves these just-so stories at a moment when we are making the world, to the consternation of our neighbours, more uncertain and dangerous.
Although the story of appeasement is extremely well known, Bouverie...retells it with gusto ... Despite the extravagant claims of Bouverie’s publicists, nothing here will come as remotely surprising to anybody familiar with the story. But he has done his homework and has a nice eye for revealing anecdotes ... It would have been better, he argues, if Britain and France had launched pre-emptive action earlier: ...But because his book is too narrowly focused on high politics, with surprisingly few forays into ordinary life or popular culture, he overestimates the British government’s freedom of manoeuvre.
Bouverie, a former British television journalist, offers few fresh details or insights into Britain’s disastrous appeasement policy — a subject that has been exhaustively mined in a plethora of previous books. Nonetheless, living as we do in an era with uncomfortable parallels to the political turmoil of the 1930s, Appeasement is valuable as an exploration of the often catastrophic consequences of failing to stand up to threats to freedom, whether at home or abroad. Particularly timely is the book’s examination of Neville Chamberlain. It highlights the dangers to a democracy of a leader who comes to power knowing little or nothing about foreign policy, yet imagines himself an expert and bypasses the other branches of government to further his aims. Throughout his minutely detailed survey, Bouverie rightly rejects the arguments of revisionist historians who claim that Britain’s lack of military preparedness, as well as the strength of pacifist public opinion, justified its determination to offer repeated concessions to Hitler.
... grounded in the political and social history of Great Britain during the period, making use of more than forty collections of personal papers and extensive examination of the press as well as the usual government documents to illustrate a changing spectrum of British attitudes and perceptions. Bouverie also provides an exceptionally fine portrait of his main character, Neville Chamberlain.
Illuminating study of the complex political calculus underlying Britain’s effort to avoid armed conflict with Nazi Germany in the late 1930s ... Examining a trove of unexplored documents, Bouverie turns a gimlet eye on excuses proffered in the aftermath ... A story with many moving parts and players that's expertly told, one that sheds new light on the first glimmerings of total war.
