Book excerpt: The records of the Joint Intelligence Committee, Britain's senior intelligence body, are now being released to the public on the same basis as other official papers. As a result, historians have available a unique archive revealing British thinking at the highest level about the world situation and threats confronting the West in the critical years after World War II. This book, by Sir Percy Cradock - for many years himself Chairman of the JIC as well as the Prime Minister's Foreign Policy Advisor - explores these hitherto top secret records and the interplay of JIC estimates and warnings with British foreign policy decisions over the first 23 years from 1945. He concentrates on the great crises of the Cold War, Berlin, Korea, Suez, Cuba, Vietnam and Czechoslovakia, but also examines some lesser emergencies involving Britain alone, such as Kuwait, confrontation with Indonesia, and Rhodesia. He compares the British organization and performance with the parallel system of US intelligence and the very different machinery of the KGB. In a final chapter he reflects on the intimate relations between intelligence and policy, and how Britain adjusted to a long period of declining power. This study aims to be a valuable addition to historical knowledge and to offer an insight into the development of Western as well as British foreign policy.