‘Wilson had said Govern or Evacuate: but these blunt alternatives did not please reasonable men. A way could surely be found of managing neither to govern nor to evacuate. Sir Percy Cox was summoned from Tehran to London and the dilemma was put to him. He pronounced it capable of solution: an arrangement could be reached by which the British neither governed nor yet abandoned the country.’

‘A curse the west has indeed brought to the east, but … not intentionally; indeed the curse was considered – and still is by many – a precious boon, the most precious that the west could confer on the east in expiation of its supposed sins; and the curse itself is as potent in its maleficence in the west as it is in the east. A rash, a malady, an infection spreading from western Europe through the Balkans, the Ottoman empire, India, the far east and Africa, eating up the fabric of settled society to leave it weakened and defenceless before ignorant and unscrupulous adventurers, for further horror and atrocity: such are the terms to describe what the west has done to the rest of the world, not wilfully, not knowingly, but mostly out of excellent intentions and by example of its prestige and prosperity.’