This is a collection of academic essays arranged in a two–volume, posthumous tribute (Gedenkschrift rather than a Festschrift) to the late Saki Ruth Dockrill (1952–2009), professor of contemporary history and international security at King's College in London. She was a scholar with a reputation for exacting standards and recognized as an eminent historian of the Pacific War, cold war, Anglo-American foreign policy, and international relations in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. Her notable books include Britain's Policy for West German Rearmament, 1950–1955 (1991), Britain's Retreat from East of Suez (2002), and The End of the Cold War Era (2005). She also was general editor of Palgrave MacMillan's Cold War History series and Global Conflict and Security series. She had master's degrees from Kyoto and Sussex Universities, a doctorate from King's College, and she had become a British citizen and member of the Anglican Church before she died tragically from leukemia.

The first volume, subtitled From Gladstone to Churchill, spans roughly the nineteenth century through the cataclysmic world wars of the twentieth century. The second volume, subtitled From Churchill to Blair, covers postwar British foreign policy from 1945 to the early twenty-first century, including relations with Japan and China, European developments, and defense planning as well as political, economic, ideological, religious, and futurist dimensions providing new insights on how a weakened Britain protected its international influence. The introductions to volumes one and two are by Brian Holden Reid and Sir Lawrence Freedman (Dockrill's dissertation advisor), respectively, with six co-editors (three for each volume) included among twenty-seven contributors, overwhelmingly British academics, to both volumes, with eleven chapters in the first and twelve in the second.

Martin Thomas's chapter in the first volume is one of the best contributions overall, examining post-World War I western military coercion via air power in Morocco and Syria (France), and to a lesser extent in Iraq (Britain). Thomas investigates the notion that “air power assisted colonial population control at minimal financial cost” (1:69). He argues there was moral value over actual capacity, and the principal use was in long range strategic reconnaissance and civil administration. Air policing was a temporary mainstay of counterinsurgency operations and by 1930 was superseded by a more integrated air-ground approach. Air power was not as effective for cheap power projection as imagined, and, while it demonstrated western technical superiority, it also revealed financial weakness. Ultimately, air power as a military solution to control colonial (or Third World) spaces was temporary at best, an assessment more than timely for twenty-first-century readers as western nations continue to use air power for intervention, as in Libya in 2011 or potentially in the ongoing conflict in Syria.

The first volume also has several chapters that examine the appeasement policy of the 1930s, with ironic mental gyrations of presumably progressive academics attempting to rehabilitate the reputation of Neville Chamberlain, a right wing, anti-communist, pro-business bureaucrat. For instance, B. J. C. McKercher astonishingly argues that Chamberlain's problem was not incompetence but intractability and misjudgments on foreign and defense policy, and Jon Mailo amazingly posits that Chamberlain's “Phoney War” strategy of assuming the defensive was not wrong, just incredibly unlucky as the Germans' desperate attack in the Ardennes in 1940 should not have been successful. This is hair splitting par excellence and part of an increasing effort to diminish Churchill, whose accounts are viewed by most historians as self-serving and distrusted, ostensibly because he was so close to the events in question.

The legacy of Dockrill is not readily apparent in the first volume, though clearly the scholars in the second volume are subject to its influence. While the first volume has topics of interest, none are really necessary for the Gedenkschrift, as her career was primarily focused on the postwar era to the turn of the twenty-first century, which is the focus also of the second and more relevant volume. A great contribution therein is Kevin Ruane on challenges to the so-called “Special Relationship” with America in the 1950s. This was tested over a possible American attack on China, considered a limited war that might have included a naval blockade, bombing airfields in Manchuria, and the use of atomic weapons. This issue continued from Truman and Attlee in the Korean War into the Eisenhower-Churchill era, with Britain resisting American intervention in Indochina in 1954, and then in the 1960s, with Harold Wilson refusing to support Lyndon Johnson in Vietnam. Britain was primarily concerned that an American war with China would detract from defending Europe from the Soviets, and the British were also understandably nervous over Eisenhower even considering the small-scale (or tactical) use of atomic weapons. British policy makers therefore often resorted, here and later, to appearing to support American policy even while quietly working to change it.

Perhaps the most provocative chapter in the second volume is that of Michael Kandiah and Gillian Staerck on the perspective of British elites on their nation's international position that since 1945 has been a source of endless debate. The famous (or infamous) 1962 barb by Dean Acheson that Britain had lost an empire but had yet to find a role, epitomized the stinging contention that Britain had to scale back its world role and reexamine its position in Europe. The Institute of Contemporary British History was created to collect group oral histories or interviews termed “witness seminars” from British policy-making elites, including Dockrill, who attended from 1986 to 2009. Collectively, the participants view Britain as having a diminished yet important world role, as Britain had contributed more to world stability than any other power.

There was also the opinion that Britain joined the Korean War to show cold war solidarity and continuing influence in Asia, even though they were not in total agreement with United States policy. The 1982 Falklands War was in part to demonstrate that Britain was not weak, as evidently revealed in the 1956 Suez Crisis, and that they could defend a distant territory where they held legitimate sovereignty. British elites also continue to believe that nuclear weapons must be retained to keep their nation a world power and that maintenance of good American relations were vital, allowing Britain power by proxy. However, there is also ambivalence as British prime ministers are expected to be pro-American, more or less, but the problem with Tony Blair was he appeared unconditionally pro-American over the Iraq and Afghan wars. The United States should be supported, but not “at all costs” (2:190).

The volume titles mentioning Gladstone, Churchill, and Blair are more of a publisher's advertising ploy rather than an accurate reflection of contents, implying a continuity of foreign policy analysis from the Gladstone to Blair eras that is not there. Many long-serving prime ministers, such as Lord Salisbury and Harold MacMillan, are almost entirely overlooked, and, while Churchill does feature prominently, it is less so for Gladstone and Blair, with the former appearing briefly in two chapters early in the first volume, including T. G. Otte's on nineteenth-century Anglo-Russian rivalry (which actually goes back to Pitt the Younger) and Blair in two chapters near the end of the second volume.

Overall, these volumes are a meritorious tribute of meticulously researched, critically analyzed, and (for the most part) cogently argued scholarship. There are some date and consistency errors, however, such as misdating the Zinoviev letter that helped bring down Britain's first Labour government to 1925 rather than the correct 1924 (1:38) and referring to Ho Chi Minh's real name first correctly as Nguyen Ai Quoc but later as Nguen Ai Quac (1:144, 145). The indexes and endnotes are excellent, but there is no bibliography. Additionally, there are no maps, and the only photo is a portrait of Dockrill duplicated in the front of each volume. The cover photos are acceptable though, as with the Dockrill portrait, the same photo of Churchill wearing a Royal Air Force uniform is used for both volumes.