It is all too easy to comment upon the deficiencies contained in a book published thirty-eight years ago on the basis of the then available evidence, and to list the changes that would be needed to bring that volume up to date with more recent scholarship. ¹ Both the questions asked by historians, and the materials open to them (especially in respect of twentieth-century sources) change significantly from one decade to the next. If historians are, in E. H. Carr’s phrase, part of a vast caravan winding through time, it is hardly surprising that perspectives about “appeasement” have altered between 1961 and 1999 – a much more considerable period of time than that between the end of the Second World War and the publication of A. J. P. Taylor’s book. Since the past three decades have also seen the opening up of the vast trove of British official records ² on the interwar years, it is inconceivable that The Origins of the Second World War would not be “dated” in many respects – as its author later acknowledged. ³ What may perhaps be more surprising is the extent to which many of Taylor’s judgments and (for want of a better word) “hunches” have stood the test of time. This was true when the first edition of this collection of essays appeared in 1986; and because there have been no dramatic advances in the scholarship on appeasement, it remains true today.