“The Special Relationship”

“Uncle Sam and Britannia”

“Apart from a few years in the early nineteenth century when British troops were burning down symbols of the new America, like the Capitol and White House, the United States and United Kingdom have maintained warm relations, overcoming whatever bumps, bruises and canine metaphors that arose along the way.

“The closeness reached a rhetorical apotheosis in 1946 when Winston Churchill, by then a former Prime Minister, delivered a speech in Fulton, Missouri, declaring a “special relationship” between the British Commonwealth and Empire and the United States, just as an “iron curtain” – another first mention — was descending across Europe.

“Through the post-World War II years, the special relationship was built upon a three-legged stool of mutual benefit in areas of military support and intelligence sharing, economic interests and cultural history, all stitched together by a common language. The stool teetered only when the leaders of the two countries were not in perfect alignment on all three legs.”

“The Special Relationship” (Amazon book list)

The OSS, CIA, and the “Special Relationship” (Amazon book list)

Espionage, Treason, and the Cambridge Five (Amazon book list)
The Soviet Union, through the Communist International (Comintern), The NKVD (later KGB), and GRU (Soviet military intelligence) was very active for decades in espionage and subversive covert activities. The most damaging spy network of the Cold War, the infamous Cambridge Spy Ring, comprised several influential British citizens-and one American, Michael Straight. While a student at Cambridge University in the 1930s, Straight fell in with the circle of notorious spies, including the infamous Kim Philby. Here is the sordid story of this clandestine espionage apparatus.

The British Political Tradition (Amazon book list)

For God, Queen, and Country (Amazon DVD list)
Liberation and subversion, imperialism and class struggles, war and hypocrisy, betrayal and solidarity, are the variegated plot themes running through this eclectic collection of British films I have selected.

Two brilliant films which capture the distinctive essence of British history and class stratification.


A Sense of History


The Ruling Class

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9:42 am on September 9, 2022