The key part played by Winston Churchill in shaping the course of the Second World War is still of great interest to historians worldwide. In the course of his research, Robin Denniston has uncovered previously unknown files of diplomatic intercepts which show that Churchill's role in British foreign policy and war planning was far more significant than has hitherto been supposed. Although neither a commander-in-chief nor a head of state, he personally...

"The eastern provinces of the Ottoman Empire used to be a multi-ethnic region where Armenians, Kurds, Syriacs, Turks, and Arabs lived together in the same villages and cities. The disintegration of the Ottoman Empire and rise of the nation state violently altered this situaiton. Nationalist elites intervened in heterogeneous populations that they identified as objects of knowledge, management, and change. These often violent processes of state formation...