Dr Tony Insall is an Oxford University graduate in Politics, Philosophy and Economics. He studied Chinese at the School of Oriental and African Studies and later in Hong Kong and has a PhD from the Department of War Studies, which was based on a study of the early post war relationship between the British and Norwegian Labour parties. He has worked in the Foreign and Commonwealth Office and his postings overseas have included Beijing, Kuala Lumpur and Oslo. He has also been an Associate Editor of the FCO Historians.

Areas of expertise

• Norway
• Scandinavia and the Nordic countries in the early part of the Cold War
• China in the twentieth century
• British foreign policy in the twentieth century
• Origins of the Second World War

Publications

Books

• Haakon Lie, Denis Healey and the making of an Anglo-Norwegian special relationship, 1945-1951 (Unipub 2010).
• The Nordic Countries: From War to Cold War, 1944-1951 (DBPO, Routledge 2011)
• The Brussels and North Atlantic Treaties, 1948-49: laying the foundations of post-war security (DBPO, Routledge 2015)
• Secret Alliances. Special Operations and Intelligence in Norway 1940-1945. The British Perspective (Biteback 2019)

Articles

• Britisk sikkerhetstjeneste og mistenkte norske bolsjeviker i mellomkrigstiden (Arbeiderhistorie 2009).
• (with Joe Maiolo) Sir Basil Zaharoff and Sir Vincent Caillard as instruments of British policy towards Greece and the Ottoman Empire during the Asquith and Lloyd George Administrations, 1915–8 (International History Review, 2013)
• Evidence from Norwegian archives of British attempts to remove Franco in 1946 (Labour History Review, 2017)