About this eBook
The Soviet Union would abandon its communist principles, Khrushchev once boasted, only 'when shrimps learnt to whistle'. Now that Gorbachev has taught his shrimps to whistle, can Western politicians cope with the challenges of a wholly unchartered new world?
All the major institutions of the post-war scene - NATO, the European Community, the United Nations - have been turned upside down. The stock-market crash of 'Black October' 1987 revealed the desperate instabilities of the global financial system. In this maze of intricate new problems and opportunities Denis Healey speaks with unique authority. A major political journalist in the late 1940s and 1950s, a leading player on the world stage for a quarter-century, he is now far and away the most distinguished Opposition commentator on foreign affairs.
His hugely successful The Time of My Life - 'the best political autobiography since Rab Butler's eighteen years ago' (Roy Jenkins, Observer) - was widely acclaimed as a masterpiece. Taking up the most powerful political themes that emerge from it Denis Healey now gives us this stimulating companion volume. In an added new chapter he looks at the wider implications of the Gulf War, the unification of East and West Germany, and the continuing unrest in Eastern Europe. In When Shrimps Learn to Whistle he offers a typically trenchant set of 'signposts' to help us all face the key international issues of the 1990s.
'Forty-three years of ruminations ... by the greatest foreign secretary (as the author quietly and reasonably implies) we never had' - Ben Pimlott in the New Statesman & Society
All the major institutions of the post-war scene - NATO, the European Community, the United Nations - have been turned upside down. The stock-market crash of 'Black October' 1987 revealed the desperate instabilities of the global financial system. In this maze of intricate new problems and opportunities Denis Healey speaks with unique authority. A major political journalist in the late 1940s and 1950s, a leading player on the world stage for a quarter-century, he is now far and away the most distinguished Opposition commentator on foreign affairs.
His hugely successful The Time of My Life - 'the best political autobiography since Rab Butler's eighteen years ago' (Roy Jenkins, Observer) - was widely acclaimed as a masterpiece. Taking up the most powerful political themes that emerge from it Denis Healey now gives us this stimulating companion volume. In an added new chapter he looks at the wider implications of the Gulf War, the unification of East and West Germany, and the continuing unrest in Eastern Europe. In When Shrimps Learn to Whistle he offers a typically trenchant set of 'signposts' to help us all face the key international issues of the 1990s.
'Forty-three years of ruminations ... by the greatest foreign secretary (as the author quietly and reasonably implies) we never had' - Ben Pimlott in the New Statesman & Society
About the author
Denis Healey, Baron Healey CH, MBE, PC, MC (born 1917) was a British Labour politician, who served as Secretary of State for Defence from 1964 to 1970, and Chancellor of the Exchequer from 1974 to 1979.
After obtaining a degree from Oxford, he served in the Second World War with the Royal Engineers, in the North African Campaign, the Allied invasion of Sicily and the Italian Campaign, and was the military landing officer for the British assault brigade at Anzio.
Healey was a photographer for many years and enjoyed music and painting.
After obtaining a degree from Oxford, he served in the Second World War with the Royal Engineers, in the North African Campaign, the Allied invasion of Sicily and the Italian Campaign, and was the military landing officer for the British assault brigade at Anzio.
Healey was a photographer for many years and enjoyed music and painting.
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