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Old World, New World: The Story of Britain and America

Strong family ties

Kathleen Burk
Little, Brown, 832pp, £25,

Vernon Bogdanor

Wednesday, 24th October 2007

Vernon Bogdanor

Winston Churchill, believing with some reason that an Anglo-American alliance could have prevented both world wars, sought at the end of his life a political union between the Commonwealth and the United States, a union of the English-speaking peoples; and indeed, during the era of Churchill, from 1898 to 1956, the idea of such a union did not seem entirely fanciful. Today, of course, it is of purely historical interest, and yet the links between Britain and America continue to remain extraordinarily tenacious. The British government is currently preparing a National Security Strategy. Who can doubt that the foundation of this strategy will be a new doctrine of international community by which the democracies pledge agreement on measures to deal with terrorism and the threat from rogue states, and that Britain and America will have a special relationship in the forefront of nations seeking to implement such a strategy?

Kathy Burk defines herself as ‘a proud defiant empiricist’, who is ‘undoubtedly happier with a document to dissect rather than with a mind to fathom’. But perhaps empiricism is not quite enough when it comes to understanding the profound bonds of amity and kinship which lie behind the modern Anglo-American relationship. Old World, New World is a wonderful book, but the intangibles which it omits are also a fundamental part of the story.

Vernon Bogdanor is Professor of Government at Oxford University

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