It would be difficult to exaggerate the interest shown by historians and publicists in the period 1918-22. Lloyd George has been one of the most written about politicians in British contemporary history, barring Churchill. Until the 1960s or even 1970s most of this attention was negative, the degree of excoriation for his alleged “adventurism” in foreign affairs vying with that for his “duplicity” in domestic matters. A. J. P. Taylor's establishment of the Beaverbrook Library (now in the House of Lords) did much to remedy this tendency, as did the tireless writings of Kenneth Morgan.

Until fairly recently, comment on the foreign policy pursued by the Lloyd George coalition usually was seen as subsidiary to that on domestic matters. We, of course, have Ullman's three-volume study of Anglo-Soviet relations until 1921, and Stephen White has contributed his Britain and the Bolshevik Revolution (1979) and, now, The Origins of Detente (1985) on Genoa itself. Carole Fink's The Genoa Conference (1984) is the inspiration for this whole volume of essays and speaks for its own importance. Other works not of direct relevance are Michael Fry's Lloyd George and Foreign Policy (1977), which only goes up to 1916, and Michael Dockeril's contribution to Taylor's essay collection on Lloyd George's foreign policy, again only up to 1914.