Having already produced a version of the Churchill-Eisenhower correspondence between 1953 and 1955, Peter Boyle has now assembled a successor volume on the short but dramatic premiership of Anthony Eden featuring the by-now familiar pleasantries of high-level communications between London and Washington, DC. The book has been produced to a high standard by the University of North Carolina Press, with a packed opening commentary from the editor offering essential historical context and a glimpse of the two contrasting personalities of Eden and Eisenhower as they strove to find common ground on some of the key issues of the Cold War. The collection rises to a natural crescendo as British preparations for their attack on Egypt slowly gathered pace in the summer of 1956, and Eden professed to Eisenhower his continuing interest in a diplomatic solution to the conflict over Suez while becoming more and more convinced that Nasser would have to be ousted.

Before the finale of the Suez crisis brought Anglo-American relations to a low point, Boyle sees the letters exchanged as reflecting a cordial and effective partnership after Eden's arrival as prime minister in April 1955, writing of their “strong mutual high regard and friendliness” (196) and their shared perspectives on the Soviet Union. Discord arises, then, as a result of the sharp divisions that emerged over how to deal with Nasser during 1956 as he challenged the Western powers in the Middle East, compounded by Eden's profound misreading of U.S. views and his failure to keep Washington informed of British planning and intentions. There can be no doubt that Eden's overemotional response to Nasser's actions (repeatedly offering the image of the Egyptian leader as a latter-day Mussolini) and determination not to be upbraided contributed to the schism, as well as his amnesia regarding the relative power positions of Britain and the United States. (Excessively emotional reactions, it might be remembered, ironically enough, were something cool British observers often tended to associate with the temperamental Americans.) In the correspondence pre sented here, Eisenhower continually emphasizes his preference for a diplomatic settlement to the crisis with Egypt and the widespread repercussions in the Arab world more generally if force were used, and Boyle is right to highlight the telling silence on Eden's side from early October onward, while military preparations reached their final stage, as “compelling evidence” (203) the prime minister understood how disapproving the Americans would be. This is surely so.

Less convincing is an interpretation of the correspondence that neatly divides it into the two distinct phases above, being perhaps illustrative of the problems of relying on one set of correspondence for a snapshot of the Anglo-American relationship. Most important it cannot do justice to the deep American suspicions of Eden that were produced by his role at the Geneva Conference on Indochina of 1954. Americans such as John Foster Dulles had found it difficult to relate to the affected style of Eden, but his close work with Molotov to bring about a settlement at Geneva, the belief he had done all he could to undermine the U.S. position at the conference, and the Eisenhower administration's view that the agreement reached was a major setback in the cold war in Asia were hard to forget. Walter Bedell Smith, the undersecretary of state, and the president's old and close colleague from the Second World War, had been moved to signal from Geneva in May 1954 that Eden lacked intellectual and personal honesty, and it would be a sad day for Britain and the United States when he became prime minister. British policy had also been considered “wobbly” by dint of Churchill's pursuit of a summit with the Soviet Union's post-Stalin leadership, while London had carefully distanced itself from Washington's approach to the first Off-Shore Islands dispute during March–April 1955. With this kind of background, the swift and ruthless way that Eisenhower and Dulles effectively declared Eden persona non grata in late 1956 and helped to engineer his removal becomes even more explicable.

One of the admirable features of this collection is that it is complete: the declassification process has now yielded to public inspection all the letters exchanged between the two leaders. There is little here, nevertheless, that will be new to the informed student of Anglo-American relations. The one important exception to this general comment is in the area of intelligence collaboration, and more specifically photo-reconnaissance of the Soviet Union. Newly released letters illuminate British cooperation with Operation “Grayback,” the large-scale release of camera-equipped, high-altitude balloons over Soviet airspace in January 1956, for which one base in Scotland was provided. They also show how, in May 1956, Eden withdrew permission for the use of British bases for the initial U-2 overflights of the Soviet Union in the aftermath of the infamous Crabb affair, a botched MI6 operation to spy on the Soviet cruiser Ordzhonikidze, which had brought Khrushchev and Bulganin for their visit to Britain the previous month. Eden's anxiety was over the potential for another intelligence mishap derailing hopes for a more constructive relationship with the Soviet Union and uncannily foreshadows the problems Eisenhower would himself confront before the abortive Paris summit four years later.

What comes across most strongly from a reading of this collection is the sparseness and shallowness of the correspondence, rather than any great depth or unburdening of feeling. Eden, though a skilled negotiator and knowledgeable diplomatic tactician, had a limited strategic sense and gave little thought to the longer-range issues of international affairs. His one visit to Washington, DC, while prime minister (January–February 1956) produced few agreements of substance. Of course, many other channels were used to handle some of the key topics of Anglo-American relations in the mid-1950s, but the volume of letters, and their relatively thin contents (except over Suez), does not compare to the earlier or later periods of Churchill and Macmillan; “reading between the lines,” the signs of estrangement were already there to see.