A Small Room in Clarges Street: War-Time Lectures at the Royal Central Asian Society, 1942-1944

ISBN-13: 9781845197148 / Angielski / Miękka / 2015 / 200 str.

Rosie Llewellyn-Jones

Opis

During the darkest days of the Second World War, a select group of people gathered together in Mayfair to listen to a series of secret lectures organized by the Royal Central Asian Society, now known as the Royal Society for Asian Affairs. Lecturers and their handpicked audience examined fast-moving events in the Middle East, Persia, and Russia with the intention to propose strategies for Britain's postwar international role. Secrecy surrounded these lectures--the scripts were not published in the Society's journal, and the audience was warned not to reveal the topics discussed outside the Clarges Street premises. These 70-year-old lectures, only recently rediscovered in the Society's archives, have a peculiar poignancy and relevance in understanding today's unquiet Middle East and how wartime events and strategies were to shape postwar policy with regard to Arab nationalism and Arab unity.