Calleo’s early training in British history, philosophy, and literature together with a “gang” of close English friends – the product of his days researching Coleridge in London – made him particularly sensitive to the problems Britain would have with the new Europe being promised in Europe’s Future. A year after publishing Europe’s Future, he set out – once more from Yale – this time to write Britain’s Future. Armed with a Guggenheim Grant, he based himself as a Research Fellow in Nuffield College, Oxford. Here he immersed himself in the economic debates driving British politics in the mid-sixties and formed a lifelong friendship with Robert Skidelsky.
The book begins with a close inventory of Britain’s imperial economic and geopolitical heritage, then contrasted with the perspectives driving the continental states toward the Common Market. In contrast to much writing at the time, Calleo’s analysis made de Gaulle’s veto of Britain’s application for EEC membership seem neither surprising nor unsympathetic. Nor, in the light of Calleo’s analysis, was Britain’s subsequently troubled history as an EU member unexpected.
‘Mr. Calleo is an impressively detached critic, sympathetic but unsparing of the self-pitying illusions propagated by British politicians. Chief among these is the idea that their failures have been the fault of some other fellow, most probably Charles de Gaulle.’
– Anthony Lewis, The New York Times Book Review, April 13, 1969
‘Among the most welcome aspects of Calleo’s analysis is an objective presentation of the solid reasons behind current French foreign policy. As he makes clear, much of the criticism of de Gaulle, both in Britain and this country, has derived from an inability to define adequately the alternatives facing the Western democracies… Calleo’s basic assessment is a welcome change from the fashionable view that all European problems are caused by de Gaulle’s stubbornness.’
– Roger D. Masters, Saturday Review, April 26, 1969