SIMON HEFFER’S GREAT VIRTUE as an historian is that he attends to the voices we should not necessarily expect. A good example is found in his coverage of the Munich crisis, when the British were contemplating what Neville Chamberlain and the diplomats were doing: on the one hand, buying peace; on the other, caving in to Hitler’s bullying and betraying the people of Czechoslovakia.
Naturally, Heffer tells us about the conversations in high places, and the (sometimes shockingly complacent) views of Neville Chamberlain, the Prime Minister. “These dictators are men of moods. Catch them in the right mood and they will give you anything you ask for.”
Heffer also turns to the diaries of the eccentric novelist John Cowper Powys. Few today have heard of, let alone read, Powys, whose great novels set in the West Country are rightly saluted in this book. But Heffer does not just whet our appetites for Powys’s superb novel (1929). He also
