Maurice Challe In July 1956, Egyptian leader Gamal Abdel Nasser took control of the Suez Canal, in violation of agreements he had signed with the British and French governments. On 14 October 1956, Challe visited British Prime Minister Anthony Eden at Chequers, accompanied by French Minister of Labor Albert Gazier. The two Frenchmen told Eden of the secret negotiations between Israel and France regarding a proposed Israeli attack on Egypt followed with military occupation by European powers, to control the Suez Canal. Eden backed the plan with UK resources including military forces, directly leading to the Suez Crisis. Challe was a French
The Falklands Play was not staged until 2002, when it was broadcast in separate adaptations on BBC Television and Radio. The play focuses on the British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher and the British government's handling of the United Kingdom's largest Foreign Affairs emergency since the Suez Crisis of 1956, the diplomatic breakdown over the Argentinian invasion of the Falkland Islands (the Islas Malvinas to the Argentines). In particular, it charts the behind-the-scenes dealings within Thatcher's Conservative government and between it and its military and the United States and Argentine governments, in the diplomatic breakdown that gave way to war and an eventual British