Averell Harriman

Pamela Harriman, said Jacques Chirac, was “elegance itself...a peerless diplomat.” That old Francophile, her father-in-law, would have smiled.

The Splendid and the Vile is the story of the London Blitz, from the moment that Winston Churchill became prime minister on 10 May 1940, until the Luftwaffe raid that destroyed the parts of the House of Commons exactly one year later, coincidentally on the same night that Rudolf Hess flew to Scotland.

Whatever arguments we might make about Ireland in the Second World War, they will help us better to understand the dynamics of today’s relationships between the great powers.