‘A Certain Idea of Britain’: British Cultural Diplomacy in the Middle East, 1945–57

Abstract

During the formative years of the Cold War, cultural diplomacy and ‘national projection’ came to occupy an important place in British policy towards the Middle East. The British Council and the official overseas information services sought to mobilise pro-democracy committees, education and exchange programmes, commercial magazine publishing and book distribution as well as the British film industry in a bid to bolster British prestige and facilitate the wider policymaking process. This article argues that many of these initiatives enjoyed significant success and that, rather than weak propaganda policy per se, it was ultimately a flawed conceptualisation of Arab nationalism and the nature of the Cold War in the Middle East that led to British failure in the 1950s.