Hankey; Man of Secrets, Volume II 1919-1931

Annapolis, Maryland: Naval Institute Press, 1972. Presumed First Edition, First printing. Hardcover. Very good/Good. 608 pages. Some wear to dust jacket edges. Includes Abbreviations, Foreword and Acknowledgments, and Index. Also includes numerous black and white illustrations, Hankey's draft "Manifesto" August 1931 on page 549, and MacDonald's amended note on financial measures on page 551. Also includes a map the the Dardanelles in 1922 on page 278. Captain Stephen Wentworth Roskill, CBE, DSC, FBA (1 August 1903 - 4 November 1982) was a senior career officer of the Royal Navy, serving during the Second World War and, after his enforced medical retirement, served as the official historian of the Royal Navy from 1949 to 1960. He is now chiefly remembered as a prodigious author of books on British maritime history. For his actions in helping keep HMS Leander afloat, Roskill was awarded the Distinguished Service Cross. In March, 1944 he was promoted acting captain and joined the British Admiralty delegation in Washington, D.C. as chief staff officer for administration and weapons. He was the senior British observer at the Bikini Atomic tests in 1946, and served as Deputy Director of Naval Intelligence, 1946-48 before retiring as a captain. On retiring from service in 1948, Roskill was appointed by the Cabinet Office Historical Section to write the official naval history of the Second World War. His three volume work The War at Sea was published between 1954 and 1961. He was a visiting lecturer at several universities, including being Lees Knowles Lecturer in 1961, the Distinguished Visiting Lecturer at the U.S. Naval Academy in 1965, and Richmond Lecturer at Cambridge University in 1967. This book covers the period from the Armistice to the fall of the Labour Government in 1931. The Paris Peace conference which Hankey in effect organized and to which he acted as secretary, in itself glitters with fascinating material. The characters of Wilson, Chemenceau, and Foch as depicted by Hankey come through sharply and offer an interesting contrast to Keynes's famous study. But, as in the earlier volume, Hankey's account of Lloyd George in action is incomparable. Derived from a Kirkus review: The book jacket makes him look like David Niven, but this second volume of a staggeringly thorough biography of the British Cabinet Secretary confirms the impression that Maurice Hankey was the quintessential civil servant, a man of humble origins who rose to Colonel and a knighthood. Hankey's own power as Cabinet Secretary fluctuated depending on the Prime Minister, and after the fall of his beloved Lloyd George, Hankey suffered, especially during Baldwin's tenure. This installment stretches from the Paris Peace Conference to the 1931 crisis, and it does give a sense of the workings of the British bureaucracy. Hankey had his fingers in everything as a sort of majordomo to the elite -- he was a ferocious organizer of strike-breaking, for one thing, and a stalwart advocate of rearmament during this period (though his relations with co-thinker Churchill seem tenuous and vexed). Roskill conscientiously points out that during these years Hankey exhibited "a hardening of character and a loss of sentiment and sensibility." Moreover, this remains a necessary source for students of British policy and practice between 1919 and 1931. The enthusiastic reception of the first volume guarantees a follow-up readership.