Dr Martin Folly
Reader in International History

Research area(s)

• The Grand alliance in the Second World War
• Diplomacy and foreign policy during  the Second World War and early Cold War
• The early history of NATO
• United States foreign policy 1914 - 1976

Research Interests

My work centres on the perceptions and attitudes that shaped relations between the United States, Soviet Union and Great Britain during and immediately after the Second World War. I am particularly interested in the role that individuals have played in the shaping of foreign policy.

For the wartime period my work is now focusing the process of cooperation and active management of inter-coalition tensions. I am also exploring the impact of Axis diplomacy on the maintenance and integrity of the Grand Alliance. For the post-war period it addresses the implications of Britain’s defence dilemmas on the genesis of the Cold War.

Project details

The British Military and the Soviet Union, 1941-45

From Torch to Teheran: Churchill, Roosevelt and Stalin and the genesis of a strange alliance

The British Defence Dilemma and the Creation of NATO

The Council of Foreign Ministers: Crucible of Cold War

Axis Diplomacy in the Second World War

‘The Ambassador and the Premier: Winston Churchill, Sir Archibald Clark Kerr and the Soviet Enigma’

Completed:

Lord Inverchapel as Ambassador to Washington, 1946-48

Harry S Truman and Democracy Promotion

The Scandinavian Question and the Genesis of the North Atlantic Treaty

Ernest Bevin’s views of the United States, 1947

From Sevastopol to Sukhumi - and Back Again: British Military Liaison in the Black Sea 1941-45