Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain declares ‘peace for our time’.
30 September 1938.

This is the first episode in my series of Fireside Chats about history. These chats will focus on C20th British history, conflict reporting and media history. This chat focuses on the history and legacy of appeasement. A controversial and occasionally misunderstood policy.

This is, of course, only a cursory chat. The history of appeasement is rich and there are lots of excellent historical works that discuss the policy in-depth, as well as provide detailed analyses of the Munich Agreement. I personally recommend the excellent works of:

• The historical roots of appeasement are discussed in great detail by Paul Kennedy in his article: Kennedy, P. (1976). ‘The Tradition of Appeasement in British Foreign Policy 1865-1939’. British Journal of International Studies, 2(3), 195-215.
• R. Gerald Hughes, The Postwar Legacy of Appeasement British Foreign Policy Since 1945 (2014). This is an excellent discussion of the legacy of appeasement and its use in political rhetoric. Its opening chapters present the historiography of the subject in an enviably clear, concise and engaging manner.
• D.C. Watt  (1965), ‘Appeasement’, The Political Quarterly, 36: 191-213. (https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-923X.1965.tb01099.x). Although this is an older article,  Watt provides a very good introduction to the subject’s historiography and to the history of the policy itself.

This is my first attempt at editing and ‘podcasting’, so it is a little rough around the edges, but hopefully, I will improve as I go on.

History Fireside Chats are produced, recorded and researched by Dr Kristopher Lovell. The audio was recorded using the Samson G-Track Pro: https://amzn.to/2YU2cit

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