Peter Beck

The Argentinian writer Borges described the combatants in the Falklands War as being like 'two bald men fighting over a comb.' But thirty years before, Britain and Argentine nearly came to blows over territory far more remote and inhospitable.

Peter J. Beck explores how Argentina's claim to the Falkland Islands has involved diplomacy carried on by cartographic and philatelic means for 150 years.

In the inter-war years, football was a popular sport which drew huge crowds of spectators. The totalitarian regimes of Germany and Italy, argues Peter J. Beck, were not slow to realise the propaganda, potential of their nations' sporting successes – and soon Britain recognised the value of sport to its own national image.