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The Official History of the UK Strategic Nuclear Deterrent, by Matthew Jones. Vol. 1, From the VBomber Era to the Arrival of Polaris, 1945-1964. London: Routledge, 2017. 547 pages. $155.
The Official History of the UK Strategic Nuclear Deterrent, by Matthew Jones. Vol. 2, The Labour Government and the Polaris Programme, 19641970. London: Routledge, 2017. 559 pages. $155.
No inquiry into British nuclear history can be undertaken in isolation from the presence of an intimate U.S. involvement. It therefore is worth taking notice of the publication of the two-volume Official History of the UK Strategic Nuclear Deterrent. Matthew Jones, professor of international history at the London School of Economics, was granted unprecedented access to hitherto unavailable materials to produce this official history.
At the beginning of both volumes, Professor Jones graciously pays tribute to the pioneers of British nuclear historiography, Professor Margaret Gowing and her associate Lorna Arnold. Gowing, official historian of the United Kingdom (U.K.) Atomic Energy Authority and professor of the history of science at Oxford, authored the studies that set the scholarly standard: Britain and Atomic Energy, 1939-1945 and, a decade later, her two-volume Independence and Deterrence: Britain and Atomic Energy, 1945-1952. Arnold assisted Gowing, then in 2001 published her own book, Britain and the H-bomb. Jones's two new volumes are worthy sequels.
America's...