From the Boer War to the Cold War, by A.J.P. Taylor (Penguin, £8.99 in UK)

A.J.R (Alan) Taylor was a prolific essayist, book reviewer and broadcaster as well as a writer of books, and this collection …

A.J.R (Alan) Taylor was a prolific essayist, book reviewer and broadcaster as well as a writer of books, and this collection of essays and reviews contains plenty of matter in spite of the shortness of some pieces included. Taylor was particularly strong on the era of English politics immediately before the Great War, when patrician statesmen such as Balfour, Milner, Joseph Chamberlain, Asquith ably ruled an empire through a system which now seems as remote as the period before the French Revolution. He had a particular insight into Lloyd George, a man who combined in himself so many good and bad traits that he was an enigma to many or most of his contemporaries. Taylor shows how well the Welsh Wizard understood the new power of the press and how skilfully he used it to his own ends (he kept reporters off as much as he could, but leant on editors, flattered them, even got his friends to buy them out if they were too troublesome). He gives some detailed consideration of that unending source of argument, the declaration of war in 1914 and Germany's degree of responsibitity Gray, the British Foreign Secretary, is shown to have reached an understanding with the French without Parliament knowing anything about it. There is a sympathetic piece on Casement, and dealing with the "Irish Question" and the Treaty negotiations, Taylor says: "British statesmen regarded Ireland as a domestic problem. None of them appreciated that Ireland was a nation. Economic considerations counted; the feelings of the Conservative Party counted most of all. The overriding consideration of Irish freedom came at the end of the list." That was written in 1971, but possibly it is equally valid a quarter of a century later.