From a British point of view, events in the Middle East and North Africa during the Second World War were at least as important as events in any other theatre. They are now seen as a bit of a sideshow; an area where, for a while, British – as well as Empire and Commonwealth troops – could still be seen facing Axis forces on the ground.
But at the time the British government – and Churchill in particular – saw the theatre as vital to current and future British interests. Cairo was the military and bureaucratic centre of the war effort in this arena. But it was a heady mixture of nationalities, with different aims, different agendas and different loyalties, and that doesn’t even include the Egyptians themselves who were equally divided.
From 1914 onwards, the relationship between Britain and Egypt was a complicated one; although not technically part of the Empire, the British effectively treated it as such, and the Egyptians naturally bridled at this. When WW2 started, this distrust led to all sorts of problems throughout the war, leading ultimately to British expulsion from the country not long after the war.
So this book had ample scope to tell a fascinating story. In the end, it fails to fully grasp this opportunity.
The author provides a straightforward account of events; concentrating understandably on the period of the Desert War. The changing military and political situation are handled well, and there is much about the bungling and rivalries that always seem to appear in such situations, and are typical of a multi-branched bureaucracy. There is also much about the machinations around the palace of King Farouk, and the internal politics of the Egyptian government.
She does give a very readable account of how the Second World War affected Cairo (and, to some extent, the rest of Egypt), but only from the viewpoint of the various ex-pat communities – particularly the British – and the Egyptian elite.
My main criticism is that there is nothing much about the majority of the population of Cairo. A lot of the material is about the social and cultural world of ex-pat Cairo; interesting as this is (although it began to grate after a while), it was a very narrow world and the author seemed more comfortable with this material than with some of the more complex issues going on elsewhere.
This is a review of the John Murray 1989 paperback edition.
It is an extended version of my review previously posted on Amazon and Goodreads.
