{"title":"Duncan Marlor","description":null,"products":[{"product_id":"fatal-fortnight-book-duncan-marlor-9781473822863","title":"Fatal Fortnight","description":"Much has been published about how Britain's ruling circle came to its decision for war in 1914 but little about what rank and file Members of Parliament thought and did as the continental 'Armageddon' drew closer. Fatal Fortnight tells the story of Arthur Ponsonby, and his backbench Liberal Foreign Affairs Committee. The book describes the suspense around Parliament as the skies darkened. It tells how, after the Foreign Secretary made his proposal that Britain should go in, Ponsonby's friend Philip Morrell stood up and called for a general debate, in the teeth of the fury of those wanted Britain to get straight into the war. It describes how the neutralists, led by Ponsonby, made their passionate case in the fateful hours as Britain hung between peace and war.  The book looks at the concealment from Parliament of the military understanding with France, and the issues of war and democracy which are still with us today. It re-examines the arguments and reflects on how the world might have been had the 1914 decision gone a different way. Alongside the political drama a human story emerges of how family support for Ponsonby and his allies sustained them as the world closed in.","brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"GB \/ VERY_GOOD \/ INTERNAL","offer_id":49564977922321,"sku":"GOR006840426","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true},{"title":"GB \/ GOOD \/ INTERNAL","offer_id":53393301143825,"sku":"GOR014898271","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/1473822866.jpg?v=1751446263"},{"product_id":"churchill-the-liberal-reformer-book-duncan-marlor-9781399051323","title":"Churchill, the Liberal Reformer","description":"Winston Churchill is handed down the generations, reinvented in the process to suit current controversies. He has been many things: presently a talisman of the political right, a war-hero of conservative outlook who saved his country; on the left, he is a reactionary imperialist, a warmongering oppressor of the workers. Both sides would be surprised by a time trip to the sensation-filled years of 1910 and 1911\\. They would find a modernist progressive, cordially loathed by the Tories, carrying through programmes of social reform and making the prison system more humane: declaring to Parliament that even convicted offenders have rights and that how a state treats them determines the level of its civilisation. A long-serving Permanent Under-Secretary at the Home Office reckoned that Churchill’s policies (which his successors continued) halved the prison population. During the last third of the twentieth century and into the next, rehabilitation has gone into reverse. Prison numbers have soared, as the punitive approach has reasserted itself, now laced with political populism. This book looks at that story in the context of the paradoxical career of Churchill the Liberal Reformer.","brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"GB \/ NEW \/ GARDNERS","offer_id":49751710990609,"sku":"NGR9781399051323","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/1399051326.jpg?v=1751427308"},{"product_id":"from-war-hero-to-peace-promoter-book-duncan-marlor-9781399051279","title":"From War Hero to Peace Promoter","description":"On 13 July 1917 a thirty-year-old junior officer on leave from the Western Front arrived at London's Euston Station, with its famous arch and great hall. Siegfried Sassoon was heading for Liverpool on a journey likely to end in his arrest. His destination was the headquarters of his battalion. A week earlier he had written to tell his commanding officer that he was refusing further military service. He enclosed a statement written to be read out in Parliament declaring that Britain's war aims were no longer worthy. He was committing, as he admitted', 'an act of wilful defiance of military authority'. He was ready to face court-martial and imprisonment (or worse). He was known in the Army as a brave and efficient soldier, already decorated and now recommended for a DSO. His speciality was in bombing. Now he had delivered a bombshell of a different kind. He hated what the war had become. He had lately turned his poetic talent into a new kind of satire. A recent composition, 'The One-Legged Man', was about what soldiers yearned for: 'a Blighty wound' to take them home to safety. The poem ends: 'He hobbled blithely through the gate; And thought 'Thank God they had to amputate'. Sassoon wanted a fair peace settlement to end the war, as did his friends in the House of Commons. There were possibilities. The day before he caught his train, the German Reichstag had passed a declaration demanding 'peace with no annexations and no indemnities': if agreed to by Britain and its Allies and followed through this would mean a settlement including German withdrawal from all occupied territory. These were days of drama for a soldier - and perhaps for the world. This book tells Sassoon's story.","brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"- \/ - \/ -","offer_id":51629502628113,"sku":"","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true},{"title":"GB \/ NEW \/ GARDNERS","offer_id":51629502824721,"sku":"NGR9781399051279","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true},{"title":"GB \/ LIKE_NEW \/ INTERNAL","offer_id":53576595210513,"sku":"GOR014968106","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/139905127X.jpg?v=1751448793"}],"url":"https:\/\/www.worldofbooks.com\/en-au\/collections\/author-books-by-duncan-marlor.oembed","provider":"World of Books ","version":"1.0","type":"link"}