Small Room in Clarges Street : War-Time Lectures at the Royal Central Asian Society, 19421944

ISBN-13: 9781845196332 / Angielski / Twarda / 2014 / 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 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. The lecturers were chosen for their inside knowledge of these countries. Secrecy surrounded these lectures many of the scripts were marked Secret or Confidential; they were not published in the Society s journal, and the audience was warned not to reveal the topics discussed outside the Clarges Street premises. The discussions that followed the lectures were held in the knowledge that frank views could be freely expressed, and are included in this volume. Although so much has changed in the international arena, 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."