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The Arabs: A Narrative History from Mohammed to the Present
History was current up to time of publication.
416 pages, Paperback
Published January 1, 1965
About the author
Anthony Nutting
23 books6 followersSir Harold Anthony Nutting, 3rd Baronet was a British diplomat and Conservative Party politician who served as a Member of Parliament from 1945 and 1956. He was a Minister of State for Foreign Affairs from 1954 until he resigned in 1956 in protest against the Suez invasion.
During WW2 he entered the Foreign Service, serving as an attaché at the British Embassy in Paris. When France fell, he was assigned to the embassy in Madrid, where he organised escape routes for Allied servicemen caught behind enemy lines from 1940 to 1944. He joined the Embassy in Rome from 1944 to 1945 and was briefly private secretary to Anthony Eden, the then Foreign Secretary.
At the 1945 general election, at 25, Nutting was elected as the MP for Melton in Leicestershire. He served as chairman of the Young Conservatives (1946 - 47) and he was the youngest member of Winston Churchill's Government in the 1950s.
He was made a Privy Councillor in 1954 and he led the British delegation to the United Nations General Assembly and Disarmament Commission in 1954 and 1955. He was an internationalist, an early enthusiast for British membership of the European Economic Community and an Arabist who was a founding member of the Council for the Advancement of Arab-British Understanding (CAABU) in 1967.
In 1954, he negotiated the final steps of the treaty with President Gamal Abdel Nasser of Egypt under which British troops withdrew from Suez; so when he discovered the joint British and French invasion plan at a meeting on 14 October 1956, he believed that the mission was mistaken and deceitful. On 31 October, despite attempts by future Prime Minister Harold Macmillan to persuade him not to resign, Nutting quit his post as Minister of State for Foreign Affairs. He did not give the customary resignation speech in the House of Commons for security reasons, and his unexplained action proved so unpopular that his constituents forced him to give up his seat in Parliament.
During WW2 he entered the Foreign Service, serving as an attaché at the British Embassy in Paris. When France fell, he was assigned to the embassy in Madrid, where he organised escape routes for Allied servicemen caught behind enemy lines from 1940 to 1944. He joined the Embassy in Rome from 1944 to 1945 and was briefly private secretary to Anthony Eden, the then Foreign Secretary.
At the 1945 general election, at 25, Nutting was elected as the MP for Melton in Leicestershire. He served as chairman of the Young Conservatives (1946 - 47) and he was the youngest member of Winston Churchill's Government in the 1950s.
He was made a Privy Councillor in 1954 and he led the British delegation to the United Nations General Assembly and Disarmament Commission in 1954 and 1955. He was an internationalist, an early enthusiast for British membership of the European Economic Community and an Arabist who was a founding member of the Council for the Advancement of Arab-British Understanding (CAABU) in 1967.
In 1954, he negotiated the final steps of the treaty with President Gamal Abdel Nasser of Egypt under which British troops withdrew from Suez; so when he discovered the joint British and French invasion plan at a meeting on 14 October 1956, he believed that the mission was mistaken and deceitful. On 31 October, despite attempts by future Prime Minister Harold Macmillan to persuade him not to resign, Nutting quit his post as Minister of State for Foreign Affairs. He did not give the customary resignation speech in the House of Commons for security reasons, and his unexplained action proved so unpopular that his constituents forced him to give up his seat in Parliament.
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Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews
July 9, 2026
A well-written but old-fashioned history
The author of this book was educated at Eton and Cambridge and was a baronet to boot. He was thus born with a silver spoon in his mouth. He served in the British diplomatic community at least part of which career was in the Middle East, where he negotiated a treaty with Nasser, a treaty which was treacherously trashed by the 1956 invasion of Suez by Britain, France and Israel. Nutting resigned over the issue and was never accepted back into politics, having been declared virtually a traitor. He had been spoken of as a future PM. I’m not sure that this career qualifies him as a historian; he studied agriculture at university. However, given the broad perspective imparted by top British education, his work here is not bad by any means. And I think resigning was the right thing.
Born in 1920, he must have absorbed history during his education in terms of leaders and battles. Later trends in the field did not impact him much, so that such areas as religion, philosophy, agriculture, land ownership, trade, diplomacy, etc. do not appear much in “The Arabs”. The first chapter covers the Arab world before Islam, the last ones look at the various parts of that world in the years before 1964, when the book was published. In between, the chapters deal with the rise of Muhammad and the beginning of empire after his death, the conquest of Iran and Egypt, the civil war which led to the division between Sunni and Shi’a, and so on past the oft-romanticized age of Harun al-Rashid and the “Arabian Nights”, the Crusades, the Mongol invasion, the Turkish domination, and the appearance of the Europeans which ultimately turned into the colonial era. The last 120 pages (out of 397) deal with the Arab revolt against the Ottomans and subsequent events in Arabia, Iraq, Syria, Palestine, Egypt and North Africa. In good British tradition, he has absolutely no use for France or the French, penning some scathing criticism, which (not in anything I’ve read personally) must have been returned toward the British by various Gallic authors. He also feels the creation of Israel was a big mistake. While Israel has never tried to “fit into the neighborhood”, ignored Palestinian rights, and has presently committed what can be called genocide, what, I wonder, was his idea for Jews around the world? Wait for the next general massacre? Apologize for their existence?
Nutting often focuses on one or two important figures of a certain time—Khalid ibn Walid of 7th century Arabia, Abd al Rahman of Spain and Harun al-Rashid of Baghdad in the 8th, Saladin (Salah-ad Din Yusuf ibn Ayyub) of Iraq in the 12th century, and such figures as Nuri es-Said (Iraq), Nasser (Egypt) and Bourguiba (Tunisia) in the 20th. This too is a style dating from earlier times.
In short, this is a popular history (very readable if you can absorb a huge number of facts) of the Arabs over 1,400 years. It may contain a fair number of personal observations in the last chapters, and gloss over many important subjects, but I think it was inevitable in a book of such breadth. I'm giving it three stars because 1) it is an amateur work even though substantial and 2) because it is written in that older style.
The author of this book was educated at Eton and Cambridge and was a baronet to boot. He was thus born with a silver spoon in his mouth. He served in the British diplomatic community at least part of which career was in the Middle East, where he negotiated a treaty with Nasser, a treaty which was treacherously trashed by the 1956 invasion of Suez by Britain, France and Israel. Nutting resigned over the issue and was never accepted back into politics, having been declared virtually a traitor. He had been spoken of as a future PM. I’m not sure that this career qualifies him as a historian; he studied agriculture at university. However, given the broad perspective imparted by top British education, his work here is not bad by any means. And I think resigning was the right thing.
Born in 1920, he must have absorbed history during his education in terms of leaders and battles. Later trends in the field did not impact him much, so that such areas as religion, philosophy, agriculture, land ownership, trade, diplomacy, etc. do not appear much in “The Arabs”. The first chapter covers the Arab world before Islam, the last ones look at the various parts of that world in the years before 1964, when the book was published. In between, the chapters deal with the rise of Muhammad and the beginning of empire after his death, the conquest of Iran and Egypt, the civil war which led to the division between Sunni and Shi’a, and so on past the oft-romanticized age of Harun al-Rashid and the “Arabian Nights”, the Crusades, the Mongol invasion, the Turkish domination, and the appearance of the Europeans which ultimately turned into the colonial era. The last 120 pages (out of 397) deal with the Arab revolt against the Ottomans and subsequent events in Arabia, Iraq, Syria, Palestine, Egypt and North Africa. In good British tradition, he has absolutely no use for France or the French, penning some scathing criticism, which (not in anything I’ve read personally) must have been returned toward the British by various Gallic authors. He also feels the creation of Israel was a big mistake. While Israel has never tried to “fit into the neighborhood”, ignored Palestinian rights, and has presently committed what can be called genocide, what, I wonder, was his idea for Jews around the world? Wait for the next general massacre? Apologize for their existence?
Nutting often focuses on one or two important figures of a certain time—Khalid ibn Walid of 7th century Arabia, Abd al Rahman of Spain and Harun al-Rashid of Baghdad in the 8th, Saladin (Salah-ad Din Yusuf ibn Ayyub) of Iraq in the 12th century, and such figures as Nuri es-Said (Iraq), Nasser (Egypt) and Bourguiba (Tunisia) in the 20th. This too is a style dating from earlier times.
In short, this is a popular history (very readable if you can absorb a huge number of facts) of the Arabs over 1,400 years. It may contain a fair number of personal observations in the last chapters, and gloss over many important subjects, but I think it was inevitable in a book of such breadth. I'm giving it three stars because 1) it is an amateur work even though substantial and 2) because it is written in that older style.
July 29, 2025
Reading experience at its finest!
Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews