Fullick Roy Powell Geoffrey

2014

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A history of a war without a purpose.

The Suez invasion by Britain and France ostensibly took place to separate two warring armies: the Egyptians defending Sinai, and the Israelis who had invaded it. In this is succeeded, in the sense that it stopped the fighting and led to a UN resolution that introduced a more international force to keep the peace.

Except that's not what happened at all. In reality the British, who allegedly took the initiative, followed the French, who had persuaded the Israelis (or been persuaded by them, it's not entirely clear) to provide a pretext to take over the Canal Zone and oust Egyptian President Nasser. The whole enterprise unwound as a result of the USA not supporting, and indeed actively frustrating, its two former allies – much to their surprise. Neither country was strong enough to go it alone.

Reading this book it's clear that there never was a clear war aim, or at least not one that was remotely plausible. The intiial plan called for taking Cairo, although no-one was sure that this would accomplish the aim of destroying Nasser's popularity. The revised plan called for occupying the Canal Zone only, which of course had the effect of strengthening Nasser's hand. Neither the military nor the political leaders seemed to think this through at the time, although many did in the aftermath.

Fullick and Powell were semi-eyewitnesses on the ground, and are scathing of everything to do with the operation, going so far as to say that it both destroyed British trust in their own government and contributed directly to the fall of the French Fourth Republic. They point out how far the world of Eden and Suez seems to be from the late 1980s when the Suez papers were largely declassified: a world where the solemn work of a Minister was simply accepted, as was the notion that invading Egypt (because it had nationalised the canal) constituted a "just" war.

3/5. Finished 19 November 2022.

(Originally published on Goodreads.)

Randall Munroe

2022

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A tour de force of creative scientific answers. It's perhaps less enjoyable than the original What If? Serious Scientific Answers to Absurd Hypothetical Questions – but only because it is a sequel, and so lacks the novelty of the first. It's still a rush, ranging from cosmology down to particle physics, with enough black holes to satisfy anyone. And I also learned about the Glass beach of Vladivostok, which is a place I'd never imagined existed and made the book worthwhile all on its own, just as Randall said it would.

5/5. Finished 14 November 2022.

(Originally published on Goodreads.)

Nigel West

1993

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The sub-title is more accurate than the title. This isn't an official history – but it reads like one, being much ore concerned with who ran which sections, the committees and organograms of SOE than with the actual secret war it prosecuted so well.

Some of the in-fighting described is inevitable, such as the tensions between SOE and MI6. An intelligence service needs quiet; a sabotage service is devoted to exactly the opposite, and so tends to disrupt intelligence-gathering by attracting the attentions of counter-intelligence services. This explains, but doesn't excuse, the hostility and machinations of MI6, which created a bureaucratic war weakening the abilities of both services to fight the actual war. It's an interesting case study in how hard it is to create organisations, even when involved in an existential fight.

2/5. Finished 14 November 2022.

(Originally published on Goodreads.)

Monty Lyman

2021

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A book about pain, and why it isn't what we think.

The conventional wisdom is that pain is caused by damage, but it's more subtle than that. Pain is a signal that can be triggered by damage, but can also be caused in response to less physical causes such as fear and a memory of past damage – and can be suppressed by activity or positive thinking, at least to a degree. This is awkward ground, as Lyman recognises: it's close to saying that "it's all in the mind", which is both literally true and deeply offensive to those suffering persistent pain. But it also offers hope that enormously dangerous pharmaceuticals can – sometimes – be replaced or complemented with cognitive therapies that might be effective.

Everyone has had the experience of being deeply engaged in some activity, incurring damage, and not noticing until afterwards. Soldiers frequently report it: they also sometimes feel significantly less pain from their injuries than civilians, because an injury that takes you off the battlefield makes you safer than you were. The signals get mixed, and the pain felt changes accordingly.

There's much to like in this book, not least a very thorough treatment of placebos. It does sometimes get lost in reporting yet another clinical trial, or yet another insight into neurochemistry. It sometimes feels a little too long and too well-referenced for a popular science take on the issues.

3/5. Finished 03 November 2022.

(Originally published on Goodreads.)