Defence is one of the biggest items of public expenditure in Britain, and has been a major political issue of the 1970s and 1980s general elections and in recent developments in East-West relations. In "The British Way in Warfare", David French offers a concise history of British defence policy over the last three centuries and an analysis of the relevance of these historical themes to security concerns. French begins his history in 1688, the year of the last successful invasion of Britain. He traces the emergence and dominance of Britain through the American and French revolutions, the Napoleonic Wars, and the Pax Britannica, to the decline of the British Empire and World War II. He then goes on to analyze the Thatcher period and Britain's relations with the nations of Europe, the Soviet Union, and the United States as they strive together to create new security structures to replace those established in the 1940s. In the final chapter, French points to the lessons we can learn from history as we consider the perplexing problems of how to safeguard British security up to the end of the century and beyond.