In the last forty years or so, ‘diplomatic history’ has died; from its ashes has arisen ‘international history. In Britain's case, during the 1950s, the study of British diplomatic history had fallen into the doldrums. Many of the monographs produced in this field during that decade tended to be rather turgid accounts of the minutiae of diplomacy and were, more often than not, based on published volumes of despatches released by European foreign ministries. These works contained little in the way of explanation of how foreign policies were actually formulated by governments, except for what could be gleaned from these publications and a limited number of archives. Thus, ‘the realities behind diplomacy’ tended to be ignored, and strategic, economic and social factors as they affected foreign policymaking were hardly mentioned. Zara Steiner was one of a new generation of historians at the time who began to investigate the process of foreign policy formulation, especially its administrative and institutional aspects – Cabinet and Cabinet ministers, Cabinet committees, the Committee of Imperial Defence after 1902, the Foreign Office, other Departments of State and their officials. Born in the United States, educated there and in Great Britain, and practising her craft as an historian in Great Britain, Zara brought to the emerging field of ‘international history’ a transnational view of Great Power politics.