Search results for ""Author Keith Kyle""

Keith Kyle was 'the epitome of the intellectual journalist' and the foremost historian of the Suez War. In this, his posthumously published autobiography, he takes the reader on a spectacular and exhilarating journey through the political history of the later 20th century, to the heart of world-shaking international crises where great events, people and places come to life. The clarity, expertise, enthusiasm and essential modesty with which he wrote gave his international audience the vital feeling of involvement and being there. Here was a reporter - and he claimed to be no more - of rare skill, intelligence, humanity and true moral purpose. Keith Kyle's extraordinary career took him from history at Oxford with A.J.P. Taylor, military service in India and Burma (ending as 'an unlikely infantry captain'), to the BBC World Service. He was recruited for The Economist by Geoffrey Crowther to act as Political and Parliamentary Correspondent in Washington, where he was at the epicentre of world politics. He was in Washington when the Suez crisis broke - the subject of his major history, Suez: Britain's End of Empire in the Middle East, which has defined the subject to the present. Keith Kyle's radio and television journalism brought him into countless British homes as BBC Talks Producer but he also held political ambitions which saw him contesting - unsuccessfully - St Albans and Braintree for Labour and Northampton South for the SDP/Alliance. In Keith Kyle's last years his life evolved from his years of vivid reporting of world politics, to scholarly research and writing at the John F Kennedy Institute of Politics at Harvard; St Antony's College, Oxford; the RIIA at Chatham House; and, the University of Ulster, where he was Visiting Professor of History.

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This title includes a new Foreword by WM. Roger Louis. On 26 July 1956, the British Empire received a blow from which it would never recover. On this day, Egypt's President Gamal Abdul Nasser nationalized the Suez Canal Company, one of the gems of Britain's imperial portfolio. It was to be a fateful day for Britain as a world power. Britain, France and Israel subsequently colluded in attacking Egypt, ostensibly - in the case of Britain and France - to protect the Suez Canal but in reality in an attempt to depose Nasser. The US opposition to this scheme forced an ignominious withdrawal, leaving Nasser triumphant and marking a decisive end to Britain's imperial era. In this, the seminal work on the Suez Crisis, Keith Kyle draws on a wealth of documentary evidence to tell this fascinating political, military and diplomatic story. Including new introductory material, this revised edition of a classic work will be essential reading for anyone interested in the history of the twentieth century, military history and the end of empire.

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