Speakers: Azriel Bermant, Stephen Pollard

Azriel Bermant’s Margaret Thatcher and the Middle East presents a fresh analysis of Britain’s role in the Middle East, based on recently declassified papers. Bermant questions claims that the Prime Minister sought to counter the Foreign Office’s Middle East policy, and maintains that Thatcher was in close agreement with the Whitehall bureaucracy on the Arab-Israeli conflict. Thatcher is revealed to be at odds with Reagan’s administration over key issues and a new angle is offered on the debate surrounding the legacy of the Balfour Declaration and the British Mandate in Palestine. He is in conversation with journalist and editor Stephen Pollard.