Canada and the End of the Imperial Dream

From 1936 to 1960, Toronto-born British MP and newspaperman Beverley Baxter offered Canadians his observations on affairs across the Atlantic via his "London Letter" column in Maclean's, which remains, after more than a century, Canada's only weekly news magazine. Thompson, emeritus professor at the University of Western Ontario, writes that Baxter's great mission was to "keep Canada and Britain together" via a great imperial union where Canadians would remain proud British subjects. Baxter's accounts frequently favored the views of his sometime-boss Lord Beaverbrook and the Conservative Party both belonged to. Sometimes Baxter sounds like he was trying to convince himself that party leadership was doing the right thing, as in his support of Neville Chamberlain's appeasement policy toward Germany. Thompson's smooth-flowing narrative offers deep context for each of Baxter's writings, which, as the British Empire's power declined, increasingly portray Baxter as an anachronism. While Thompson views Baxter's letters as a "unique and influential record of the way in which Britain's image was conveyed to Canadians," he is right to conclude that had Baxter written for another decade, he would have been ridiculed for his outdated notions. (Feb.) Canadian distribution: Publishers Group Canada, U.S. distribution: Oxford Univ.