Piers Brendon

No Honest Mistake

Iraq: The Cost of War

By

William Heinemann 467pp £25 order from our bookshop

Sir Jeremy Greenstock wrote this book in 2005 but the government prevented him from publishing it. Apparently Jack Straw did not want Greenstock’s record of his work as Britain’s permanent representative at the United Nations (1998–2003) and as UK special envoy for Iraq (2003–4) to appear while ministers responsible for the Iraq War and its aftermath were still in office. Certainly they had much to hide, but Greenstock, who loyally delayed publishing his book until the emergence of the Chilcot Report and sticks to his original text (adding only an introduction and epilogue), offers no dramatic revelations. A diplomat to his fingertips, he writes in the bland, discreet, emollient argot of his caste.

Sign Up to our newsletter

Receive free articles, highlights from the archive, news, details of prizes, and much more.

Follow Literary Review on Twitter

  • Last Tweets

    • ‘At every waking moment Barbara Hepworth was aware of herself as a woman paving the way in a man’s world’ From the… ,
    • The entertaining Howard Jacobson is in conversation with Prof John Mullan at the Queen’s Park Book Festival on Sund… ,
    • 'A modest and retiring man, Thompson spent his life describing apple varieties and recommending the best – Ribston… ,
    • 'Macfarlane is a poet with the instincts of a thriller writer, an autodidact in botany, mycology, geology and palae… ,
    • 'Some scholars attribute Shakespeare’s pre-eminence to four centuries of propaganda and not to the fact that Hamlet… ,
    • RT : We would appreciate any retweets ,
    • We've just stumbled on a gem from the LR archive. The emoluments page from May 1995, in which one reviewer asked to… ,
    Follow Us