First published in 1985, The English-Speaking Alliance is the story of how post-war Labour governments sustained the image of Britain as world power and laid the foundations of the West's Cold War foreign policy. It is told from sources in the British, American and Australian archives, some of which have been used for the first time.

Ritchie Ovendale was a former member of staff at the Department of International Politics at Aberystwyth University, UK. He came to the Department of International Politics as a lecturer in 1968 after studying in his native South Africa (BA & MA Natal), Canada (MA McMaster) and Oxford (DPhil New College). He was in part motivated to leave South Africa by the apartheid system which helped shape his political awareness. A Fellow of the Royal Historical Society, Ritchie was an accomplished historian and prolific author.