‘Un livre problématique’: Official History, Anglo-French Relations, and the Fallout from M. R. D. Foot’s SOE in France

As the first official history of a secret service, SOE in France (1966) by M. R. D. Foot represented a major departure from the long-standing culture of secrecy that surrounded Britain’s intelligence community. Following publication, the book was criticized in France for its treatment of the resistance and its leader, Charles de Gaulle. This reaction was so vituperative that fears surfaced in Whitehall that the government-sanctioned book would be weaponized by de Gaulle, now president of France, to block a second application by the United Kingdom to join the Common Market. This article examines the missteps that were made by officials in charge of the project that put the British government on a collision course with the French downstream. It is argued that, while officials should have concentrated on the book’s portrayal of the resistance, they were preoccupied with removing unflattering material about statesmen like Winston Churchill and Anthony Eden. The article examines how officials, to safeguard a second EEC bid, refused to acknowledge their own failings and instead painted Foot as a second-rate historian. It speaks to a fascinating conversation about the dangers of scholars working with the state, which is more powerful and has agendas at odds with academic historians.