In his preface to the 1998 reissue, Michael Foot wrote, 'Guilty
Men was conceived by three London journalists who had formed the
habit of meeting on the roof of the Evening Standard offices in
Shoe Lane, Fleet Street, just after the the afternoon paper had
been put to bed and, maybe, just before the Two Brewers opened
across the road.'
The book's genesis and publication could hardly have been
swifter. Its writing took four days from the 1st to the 4th June
1940: it was published on the 5th July. It is an angry book,
indeed, a devastatingly effective polemic. Its target was the
appeasers of the 1930s, the leading culprits being Baldwin,
Chamberlain and Halifax who had left the country so ill-prepared,
and who, by their pusillanimity, had emboldened Hitler and
Mussolini; and in the case of the last two still favoured some
accommodation with the fascist dictators. In today's parlance, it
would be called a wake-up call. It was very successful selling
about 200,000 copies.
Kenneth Morgan, Michael Foot's biographer, describes the book as
consisting of 'a series of brief vignettes of key episodes or
personalities, the latter invariably foolish or dishonest.' Michael
Foot wrote eight of the chapters, the first and most powerful one
being on Dunkirk.
Although Michael Foot was the main contributor, and the one who
suggested 'Cato' as the umbrella pseudonym, the other two, as
Michael Foot would be the first to admit, Peter Howard and Frank
Own should not be forgotten.
Seventy years on, "Guilty Men" has not lost its readability and
power to enrage.
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