Operation Idris provides the unofficial story behind the British Administration's cultivation of Sayyid Mohammed Idris as the figurehead for their project of indirect rule in Cyrenaica. Operation Idris looks beneath the veneer of the British administration of eastern Libya (Cyrenaica) from the time that Rommel's Africa Korps was driven out of North Africa by the Allied forces. Drawing on the diaries and memoir of his father, who served in the administration, Richard Synge provides the essential detail of Britain's overall political strategy for the territory, which prioritized promoting the...