Jonathan Colman's book carries on a long and distinguished tradition of writing about exactly this theme of Anglo-American relations and focuses on a particularly fascinating time period. The accession to power, within just over a year, of two “big bosses,” Lyndon Johnson and Harold Wilson, made the fundamental challenges that faced them both even more complicated. Both men were used to getting their own way on the domestic front; neither had any deep experience of, or grounding in, foreign policy. The problems they had to unravel were, to say the least, formidable: Wilson and Johnson, indeed, came to sense that they might be intractable. They included nuclear cooperation and proliferation; relations with the Soviet bloc; an increasingly assertive and restive China; disordered world trade and currency systems; inflation; lagging international development; and, increasingly and ominously, the situation in Vietnam. The in tray was indeed overflowing. Wilson thought that he could help on every front, in return for economic help; Johnson was not so sure. Colman's book tells the story of their relationship across seven main chapters, covering their early wary communications through the summit meetings in 1964 and 1965 to the crisis of devaluation and the period of dislocation that followed.

Colman is very good on the main personalities involved, and there are illuminating and lively sketches of the two principals right at the start of the book. Johnson's occasional contempt for Britain's new Labour prime minister comes across particularly well. Here was the “Yorkshire Walter Mitty” begging for money, coming round cap in hand time after time, and then still presuming to lecture Johnson about Vietnam—even while he refused to commit troops and ships! The president was thought to have called Wilson a “creep”—though, as Colman notes, no one can quite corroborate the story. The contrast with the more recent and cordial relationship between George W. Bush and Tony Blair could hardly be more marked—except for the fact that the Labour left criticized Wilson nearly as harshly as they have done Blair, since he usually failed to condemn U.S. actions in Southeast Asia.

Another strength of the book is that it tells us much more than we already knew about U.S. experts’ and bureaucrats’ views of the British. State Department research papers such as “What Now for Britain?” drawn up in February 1968, are utilized, as well as Foreign Office planning papers written in London. Colman's use of the U.S. National Archives in Maryland, rather than just the Johnson papers in Austin, Texas, allows him to build up just the fascinating picture of friendship, rivalry, jealousy, and interdependence that other scholars, such Nigel Ashton, have recently divined. This very interesting material might have been used even more extensively to open up the discussion of the personalities involved, which remains highly dependent on the thoughts and actions of the two men “at the summit.” Many of the ongoing connections in the so-called special relationship consisted of bilateral meetings at a much lower level, and, although Colman hardly denies or contradicts this, they come across much less clearly than the musings of the “big two.” This, though, is a minor flaw, given the necessary emphasis of a book interested in the highest levels of diplomacy: for the most part, A Special Relationship? draws very wisely on scholarship conducted since the archives were opened. The work of Saki Dockrill and John Dumbrell has obviously been highly influential here, as one would expect.

All the same, the essentially narrative approach taken in the book—essential if all the detail is to be included—leaves some of the older historiography intact. Chapters 6 and 7, entitled “A Declining Relationship” and “One Ally among Many,” hold to the more traditional story that Britain was being cut adrift given Wilson's decision to withdraw militarily from East of Suez and his devaluation of sterling. It must at least be wondered aloud whether this is the right emphasis. U.S. government papers are, quite rightly, cited to show how far Johnson's advisers were aware of Wilson's fall from favor with his party, and the electorate, at home: the inference, perhaps, is that Britain itself was rapidly weakening relative to the United States. This is not my view. It was, in fact, the U.S. economy and U.S. force of arms that were in free fall: the dollar, in particular, was about to feel the full force of international speculation. Inflation and Vietnamese resistance were also mounting very quickly. In contrast, the British were doing rather well to divest themselves, however tardily, of an expensive world role, as well as starting to put right their balance of payments. Colman further follows tradition by concluding that “the ultimately less traumatic course” would have been for Britain to have devalued the pound and to pull out East of Suez much earlier (179). The political, and especially the economic, context actually meant that these decisions were much more finely poised than this. Johnson, as Colman notes, little knew or cared how far the British would have to go at home to defend sterling, but the point is that the Labour Cabinet would probably have had to take exactly the same unpleasant, unpopular, and deflationary decisions had they devalued early on in their term.

These are differences of interpretation. The strengths of Colman's work are the attention to detail, the very impressive range and depth of his archival work, and the fact that most of the twists and turns in the transatlantic relationship are covered. These assets mean that most scholars and students of diplomacy after 1945, and of the government and politics of the United States and United Kingdom, will learn something new within the covers of this book.