Book talk
This talk was intended to mark the publication of the first two volumes of Professor Matthew Jones’s Official History of the UK Strategic Nuclear Deterrent (Routledge, 2017). It took its central concern one of the fundamental issues that lay at the heart of arguments over whether Britain should develop and then maintain its own strategic nuclear force under independent, national control: under what circumstances would a UK Government ever have ordered such a force to be used? From this point of departure it examined the interplay in British nuclear policy between Cold War theories of deterrence, the tensions of the Western Alliance, national prestige, pressures on defence spending and party politics in post-war Britain.
Matthew Jones is Head of the Department of International History at the LSE. His most recent publications include, The Official History of the UK Strategic Nuclear Deterrent, Volume I: From the V-Bomber Era to the Arrival of Polaris, 1945-1964 (2017); and Volume II: The Labour Government and the Polaris Programme, 1964-1970 (2017).
David Stevenson is Professor of International History at LSE.
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The Department of International History (@lsehistory) teaches and conducts research on the international history of Britain, Europe and the world from the early modern era up to the present day.
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