2. Curzon Imperial Statesman by David Gilmour

This biography of George Curzon was generally a reasonable one except that it seemed to lack a lot of substantive criticism of Curzon's life and work. It was somewhat critical but it could have been more critical. I became interested in Curzon because when he was Foreign Minister in the post war years he was responsible for a failed treaty with Persia. I have always felt that the treaty was an anachronism borne out of the mind of a man who did not understand the new realities of the post-WWI world. This book helped me understand some of the reasons behind the treaty.

Curzon was an accomplished imperialist. He had a short tenure as an MP, a few years as undersecretary to the India Office, seven years as the Viceroy to India, a number of years as a member of the Imperial War Cabinet and four years as the Foreign Minister.

He became familiar with the near and middle east as well as the Indian subcontinent by taking regular six month voyages traveling to Egypt, the Sudan, the Arabian Peninsula, Persia, Afghanistan, Turkey and India.

He was a consummate imperialist and a great believer in the Great Game - the decades long cold war between Russia and Britain to control the land passage to India and the Caucuses. It was this Imperialist philosophy that blinded him to the realities of the post world war one world: he continued to believe that it was important to try to restrain Russia even though England was under huge economic pressure to cut its expenditures on the empire and the Russian revolution had significantly reduced the military might of the Tsarist empire.

For me this book answered a lot of questions. For those of you interested in great imperialists and/or the Great Game this is a worthwhile read.