This book brings together eighteen pieces written over a period of fourteen years. Effectively it serves as a digest of the work of one of the leading British scholars of Anglo-American relations in the 1940s. The coverage ranges from what might be regarded as traditional diplomatic history to the sociocultural aspects of international affairs, and he touches on the theoretical concerns of international relations and contests with some plausibility his own label as a mere functionalist. Reynolds gives us a rounded view of the Anglo-American relationship. He acknowledges the economic rivalries and political, social and cultural tensions that recent scholarship has tended to emphasize, but believes that the relationship was truly “special” – while acknowledging that the term, like others, such as “World War II” or “isolationism” are the product of conscious construction and manipulation. For Reynolds, Churchill and Roosevelt were at the heart of the relationship; at lower levels, where he principally focuses on aspects of Anglo-American interactions in Britain like troop exchanges, it is not quite so clear-cut that amity outweighed disagreement. Reynolds also investigates the connection of this relationship to the onset of the Cold War – the coverage here is somewhat more selective, but he usefully demonstrates that Churchill and Roosevelt did not want the Cold War and implies that their views of Stalin were neither deluded nor naive. Churchill's “iron curtain” speech is another example of the manipulation of language – his objective was to revive the special relationship, and also, perhaps crucially, to reinvigorate his own political energies after electoral defeat.

The book has its limitations, mostly implicit in the form. As a collection of essays there are two main challenges: to integrate the pieces into a coherent whole and to bring them up to date. Reynolds has done the latter with a light touch, and he is correct that the samples of his work that he has chosen stand up very well. There might, however, have been more extensive discussion of recent discourse on Roosevelt and Churchill in World War II and the Cold War. Saying this is not to detract from the usefulness of having these excellent essays collected together in one place and of the multi-dimensional feel to the Anglo-American relationship that can be obtained from them.