At first sight, Pax Economica does not look like a book that will throw off amusing stories to entertain your friends over rosé-fuelled lunches in Tuscany or the Dordogne. Even Starmerite gatherings under the olive tree may not want to hear much about the Marx–Manchester tradition of leftist free-trade enthusiasts. Indeed, their pro-single-market descendants (and Marc-William Palen traces those connections persuasively) have now been anathematised by the Labour leadership. 

But while he presents a serious argument, with much detail about the interactions between free-traders, left-wing socialists, peace movements and early feminists, Palen has a good eye for the telling anecdote. 

He begins with Gershwin’s anti-­protectionist 1927 musical Strike Up the Band, about a Connecticut cheesemaker who wants to corner the American cheese market and persuades the government to impose a 50 per cent tariff on Swiss cheese imports. This leads to a tariff war, then a real war in