A Life in Peace and War

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Summary: Those who ignore the lessons of the past ...
Review: Urquhart was in on the formation of the UN from before Day One and he climbed the ranks to the near summit in a career spanning four decades. At the end of it all, he was knighted. His memoirs, the content of this book, provide a fascinating insight into the workings of the organization, the attitudes of the various Secretaries-General under whom he served, and the intricacies of policy formulation and action at the international level. It is these which are the real nub of the book. To compare Urquhart's accounts of the crises in the Congo, Cyprus and the Middle East, decades ago, with the situation as it stands today is to conjure up ghosts which are startling in their familiarity. Urquhart's lesson is that nothing, or at best very little, has been learned in the intervening period of the need for the world's key players to form clear and agreed policies which will allow the enactors of their will, the UN Secretariat and its field missions, to respond to crises. The s! orts of problems we face today in Bosnia, Kosovo, Angola, Sierra Leone (and of course the Congo, Cyprus and the Middle East) are reducible in outline to the sorts of crises the UN faced and dealt with during Urquhart's time, successfully and not at all successfully. Why this was so is spelled out in the book. And what emerges as frightening in its treatment of past attempts, past failures, is the evidence presented of wishy-washiness, insincerity, pettiness and plain wrongedness of the policies adopted by the key players of the time. Urquhart has no axe to grind and has no need to point the finger at the UN's many detractors in order to add shine either to his own outstanding record or to buff the organization's tarnished reputation, in particular its low standing in the United States. That he does so, out of respect for the historical record, is itself instructive and a warning to all of us who commit the subconscious daily error of mistaking what we read in the papers and se! e on TV for the way things really are in this world. For a ! change, turn off the TV. Throw the newspaper in the bin. Read this book and know what we are all up against.

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Summary: A rare person who doesn't blow his own horn
Review: Urquhart's book could have been just like so many others in detailing political events in the last fifty years. It is unique however because the author doesn't let his own narrative and the event s of his own life over-ride the significance of the political ones. This is indeed rare: not many political personages or at least autobiography writers can resist the temptation to make their role greater than it was. Urquhart comes across as self-effacing, discreet, and above all, imaginative. If you want to know what's been happening in the field of collective security, and the UN's involvement in this aspect, this is a great read.