Suez Crisis Peacekeepers to police the Egyptian–Israeli border, British Prime Minister Anthony Eden resigned, Canadian Minister of External Affairs Lester Pearson won the Nobel Peace Prize, and the USSR may have been emboldened to invade Hungary. The Suez Canal was opened in 1869, after ten years of work financed by the French and Egyptian governments. The canal was operated by the Universal Company of the Suez Maritime Canal, an Egyptian-chartered company; the area surrounding the canal remained sovereign Egyptian territory and the only land-bridge between Africa and Asia. The canal instantly became strategically important, as it provided the shortest ocean link between
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