Tony Blair takes a piece of paper to a table by the window of his cramped apartment. He has to begin writing the speech in which he will ask Par liament to vote for war. It is Saturday afternoon. There is just the daily phone call with George Bush still to come. While he writes he muses about the dangers of a world in which Europe and America drift apart, when everything becomes a game in which old rivalries are played out forever. Tony Blair is an optimist. He believes that bad old patterns can be broken. He is a dreamer too. He thinks that patterns have been already broken which are still firmly in place. If Europe had been strong and united, he says, he might not be needing to write this speech--andcould be enjoying the sun instead. 'Dad,' comes a male teenage cry from the kitchen below. 'Pick up the phone.'

Tony Blair was America's closest ally in the war against Saddam Hussein. It was a powerful yet precarious position for the British Prime Minister, as he fought for his own future in backing George W. Bush and sending Britain's forces into Iraq. In this gripping day-by-day chronicle, Peter Stothard takes us behind the scenes as no one has before to reveal a unique portrait of a political leader under fire at the center of the world stage.

Over a period of four weeks in March and April of 2003, Tony Blair risked his status as the United Kingdom's most successful Labour Prime Minister for the chance of an unknowable place in history. Before Britain could help the United States, Blair faced a battle against his own voters, his own party, and his own allies in Europe. These were among the most tense and tumultuous weeks the world had seen since the fall of the Berlin Wall. In thirty days, Blair took on his opponents and won.