商品簡介
Choose Your Weapons opens with a sensation-the last ministerial duel in British political history. This involved two highly contrasting Foreign Secretaries, Castlereagh and Canning. Although both survived the encounter, future holders of this great office of state have fought with words not pistols. The two men were divided by ambition but also by ideas. Castlereagh favoured quiet diplomacy, compromise, a concert of Europe. Canning was more eloquent, noisier, more inclined to intervene in other people's affairs. Through a century and a half of foreign policy this division influenced the eleven Foreign Secretaries who feature in this book. It remains with us today.
Douglas Hurd's chosen Foreign Secretaries vary greatly in their fame and effectiveness. Some, such as Lord Salisbury and Anthony Eden, rose to the highest office of all. Others, among them Sir Edward Grey in 1914, found their role usurped when war threatened. Forgotten men are brought into the light: the fifteenth Lord Derby, who never lunched, planted a million trees and for years wrestled with Disraeli's passion for national prestige; or Austen Chamberlain, with his monocle, square chin and herbaceous border, who carried to its height the hope of peace between the two World Wars.
Drawing on his own experience, first in the diplomatic service and later as Foreign Secretary under Margaret Thatcher and John Major, Hurd shows how the role has changed. His accound provides a history of British foreign policy as Britain climbed to its peak of Empire and became for a few decades `chance guardian of the globe.'
Hurd carries the argument forward into the present. What is the role of diplomacy in the modern world? How should a British Government balance the interests of the nation and the ideals which its leaders and its people prefer? Have we the strength, alone or with others, to punch above our weight? He concludes that though knowledge of history does not necessarily change politicians into statesmen, they ignore history at their peril.
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作者簡介
Douglas Hurd is a former diplomat, politician and author. He was an MP between 1974 and 1997, and served as Secretary of State for Northern Ireland, Home Secretary, and Foreign Secretary in Margaret Thatcher's government. He is the author of a highly acclaimed biography of Robert Peel, as well as a number of thrillers and his autobiography, Memoirs, published in 2002. He lives in Oxfordshire.
Douglas Hurd was joined in this work by Edward Young, who after gaining a First in History at Cambridge won a Mellon Scholarship to Yale, where he studied history and international relations as part of the Grand Strategy Program.
