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Winston Churchill¡¯s friend the Aga Khan once told him, ¡°You have what I may call a cursory knowledge of Indian affairs.¡± It was a fair comment. His prodigious literary talent ¨C genius indeed ¨C was never matched by his intellectual grasp, brilliant though it often appeared. His enthusiasms were powerful, but erratic. In his youth he committed Edward FitzGerald¡¯s translation of The Rub¨¢iy¨¢t of Omar Khayy¨¢m to memory; later he admired Katherine Mayo¡¯s anti-Hindu writings, and approvingly observed that ¡°while the Hindu elaborates his arguments, the Moslem sharpens his sword¡±.

Churchill¡¯s judgement was often sound. He fought long and hard against David Lloyd George¡¯s disastrous support for the Greeks against the Turks ¨C ¡°On this world so torn with strife I dread to see you let loose the Greek armies¡± ¨C only to abandon his opposition in the end. He could argue intelligently against the use of loaded terms such as ¡°fanaticism¡± to describe Muslim behaviour. He told the Arabs of Palestine that the second part of the Balfour declaration (guaranteeing the rights of non-Jews) was ¡°vital to you and you should hold it and claim it firmly¡±; sadly, he failed to convince them.

Although Warren Dockter¡¯s publisher would have us think that his book overturns a ¡°widely-accepted consensus that Churchill was indifferent to the Middle East¡±, this seems doubtful. Churchill¡¯s long commitment to Zionism is well known ¨C likewise his dramatic role in the delineation of the new Arab states at the 1921 Cairo Conference. On these high-profile issues, there are few revelations here. There is, however, a mass of detail on Churchill¡¯s consistent, often surprising interest in Islamic affairs. One example is the Central London mosque project of 1940, to which he gave a large government subsidy.

A question that must arise is: how well did Churchill understand Islam? It seems clear that his main interest in Islam was the aid (or threat) that Muslims might offer to Britain¡¯s position in the world ¨C above all in India. The fact that it is, Dockter thinks, ¡°somewhat remarkable that Churchill even knew¡± in 1921 that there were conflicts between sects of Islam, speaks volumes about the British ministerial grasp of essentials even after six years of attempting to control Mesopotamia/Iraq ¨C and placing a Sunni monarch on its throne. His cherished idea of fostering a pan-Arab confederation headed by Ibn Saud, Saudi Arabia¡¯s first king, was quite unrealistic. (Churchill blithely offended Ibn Saud by downing whisky in his presence ¨C a small but telling point. Roosevelt was more sensitive.)

Dockter¡¯s comments on Churchill¡¯s attitudes (orientalist, quasi-racist, blatantly or shamefully racist) add up to a heavy charge sheet. It is not clear whether he thinks that Churchill¡¯s diffuse approval of ¡°the Islamic world¡± excuses him. That key phrase remains vague, sometimes appearing as the ¡°Arab and Islamic world¡±; Dockter says that the 1948 Arab-Israeli war ¡°reinforced a sort of sympathetic approach to the Islamic Arabs¡± (although one-tenth of Palestinian Arabs were Christians). Boris Johnson hails this book as ¡°timely¡±; but it is hard to see how Churchill¡¯s Victorian views remain relevant. Rather carelessly written and edited, it lacks the sharpness to properly dissect them.