It was less than a year since the Second Spanish Republic had been founded. In early December 1931 parliament, which had become the focal point of national politics with the elections to the Constituent Assembly, accepted the new constitution by an overwhelming majority after three months of lively debate, and elected the first democratic state president. In mid-December the right-wing Radical Party withdrew from the Republican/Socialist coalition, which was an advantage for the reform programme advocated by premier Manuel Azaña, and seemed to pave the way for reforms to be forced through. These were aimed, above all, at modernising the economy, establishing social justice in rural areas, continuing the process of democratisation and developing federal, decentralised structures. However, the first parliamentary session of the new year, with the new government, was certainly not dominated by the reform measures fought for with such determination. Rather the central theme of the opening session was a bloody incident in a small place in the south-west region of Extremadura which stirred up public opinion to an extreme degree in Spain during the first days of January 1932.

Why did fascism not succeed in France in the 1930s to the extent that itdid in Germany? Although the appeal of fascism increased dramatically in France between 1936 and 1938 as part of the backlash to the Popular Front, the fact remains that neither of France's two largest fascist movements – Colonel de La Rocque's Croix de feu/Parti social français and Jacques Doriot's Parti populaire française – came to power during this period. In French Fascism: the Second Wave, 1933–1939, one of the reasons (among several) that I gave for the relative failure of French fascism was the negative reaction of many French conservatives and Catholics to Hitler's repression of dissident German conservatives and Catholics in 1933 and 1934 – a reaction which indirectly diminished the potential appeal of homegrown fascism through guilt by association. Although I alluded to this reaction in my study, I did so without providing sufficient documentation. One of the purposes of this review of French press responses to Hitler's first two years in power is to correct that shortcoming.

As the new Labour government has declared its intention to enhance Britain's role in Europe, there is renewed interest in the chequered history of Anglo-European relations. Of particular relevance in view of the present policy reappraisal is the period between 1955 and 1963, as the challenge here is to account for perhaps the most fundamental policy reversal: from Britain's refusal to take part in the common market project launched by the six member countries of the European Coal and Steel Community(ECSC) at the Messina conference to Prime Minister Harold Macmillan's effort to negotiate entry into the European Economic Community (EEC). Given that this latter effort proved unsuccessful, it is said by some that the earlier date represents the British failure to seize the opportunity to be part of the European project. The catchphrase‘missing the boat at Messina’ – though not undisputed – is most illustrative of this view.

In mid-July 1961 the Conservative government in Britain, headed by Harold Macmillan, decided to apply for full membership of the European Economic Community (EEC). Successive British governments had persistently opted for intergovernmental co-operation instead of supranational integration as in the case of the European Coal and Steel Community (ECSC) and the EEC. Thus the application, which implied the intent to join a supranational structure and a customs union, marked an unexpected and somewhat surprising break with the well-established British post-war policy.

An older friend of mine, a man of outstanding intelligence and great novelistic talent, asked me a rather curious question: ‘Did you notice that out there in the street everybody is acting abnormally? The salesman is pretending to sell, the bricklayer is building imaginary homes, newspapers don't have any news, the children's traffic warden is waving his lollipop like crazy, but there isn't really any traffic […].’ This friend of mine remembered the pre-war years, but I later realised that even people who had never seen anything other than the People's Republic of Poland had the same kind of feeling.