Suez Oral History Project

The decision of Gamal Abdel Nasser, President of Egypt, to nationalise the Suez Canal in July 1956 provoked, in the following October, Great Britain and France to launch an amphibious and airborne assault on Port Said, Egypt, while Israeli armed forces attacked Egyptian forces in the Sinai. Britain, France and Israel, under diplomatic pressure from the UN, USA and USSR, withdrew their forces, to be replaced by UN peacekeepers. The Suez Oral History Project, an initiative of the Institute of Contemporary British History, London, and sponsored by the Nuffield Foundation and King's College London, consisted of a series of interviews with British political, diplomatic and military figures involved at a senior level in the Suez Crisis of 1956. The interviews were undertaken between 1989 and 1991 by Anthony Gorst of the University of Westminster and Dr W Scott Lucas, then of the University of Birmingham. Transcripts of the twenty one interviews were subsequently produced and returned to the interviewees for review and correction where necessary. Some alterations were made, which, apart from a few amendments for security purposes, were mainly for grammar and clarification of expression.