Book excerpt: This book explores the tumultuous war years through the lens of the British Embassies in Cairo and Baghdad, demonstrating the role that the Second World War played in shaping the political and social map of the contemporary Middle East. The war served as a catalyst for seismic changes in Arab society and the emergence of new movements that provided powerful critiques of British intervention and of the governments that facilitated it, making the war a critical turning point in Britain's empire in the Middle East.