Britain's Involvement in Vietnam examines the British army's role in restoring French colonial rule to the south of the country, casting new light on post-war relations.

On 12 September 1945, a batallion of British Gurkhas arrived in Saigon, the first element of a force under General Douglas Gracey,  tasked by the Potsdam agreement to disarm the defeated Japanese military. North of the 16th parallel, the task of occupation fell to the Kuomintang forces of Chiang Kai-shek. South of it, Britain was to...

Hitler, Mussolini and Japan posed a terrible threat to Britain and its empire. With America withdrawn into isolationism and Stalin's Russia hostile to the West, it is hardly surprising that Britain strove to sustain peace for as long as possible by the traditional tools of diplomacy and accommodation. Stigmatised as 'Appeasement', this has often been held to be a bankrupt policy, epitomised by Chamberlain's Munich Agreement in 1938, handing over the Sudetenland. Hitler and Appeasement shows, in contrast, that many of the government's policies were reasonable and well-thought-out; nor did...