Philip Towle. Going to War: British Debates from Wilberforce to Blair. Basingstoke and New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2009. A short and occasionally polemic book which covers a lot of ground. First looks at how different sections of society have dealt with the question of war -- including novelists such as H. G. Wells and Nevil Shute, and 'armchair strategists' like J. M. Spaight, all persons of interest to me -- before winding up with the question: do such debates matter? Sensibly confines most discussion of Iraq and Afghanistan to the penultimate chapter.

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