With the British Army having spent much of the last decade engaged in counter-terrorism activities in Afghanistan and Iraq, now is a salient time to revisit a previous episode of this kind from the mid-20th century.

David Cesarani’s Major Farran’s Hat: Murder, Scandal, and Britain’s Secret War Against Jewish Terrorism, 1945-1948 deals with the last years of the British mandate in Palestine, with the struggle between Jewish paramilitary groups and anti-insurgency squads growing increasing dirty.

Read James Vaughan’s review here.