Irrational leaders pose special problems for scholars. Some future historian will have to have a say. What would that be? About Donald Trump? About Boris Johnson? Until recently, the British prime minister most often placed in this category was Anthony Eden, who served as foreign minister from 1951 to 1954, then succeeded Winston Churchill in the top job when the latter stepped down in the fall of 1954. The reason for singling Eden out—as Kevin Ruane and Matthew Jones rightly note—is the minister's extraordinarily reckless behavior in 1956, when Egyptian leader Gamal Abdel Nasser nationalized the Suez Canal and Eden conspired with France and Israel to get it back. Eden's comments about Nasser and general deportment were such that others feared for his sanity. Former Minister of State Anthony Nutting supplied chapter and verse in his book No End of a Lesson.
Ruane and Jones turn this image upside...