Winston Churchill, aged thirty-seven, newly appointed first lord of the Admiralty, ordered four more battleships ‘to prepare for an attack by Germany as if it might come the next day’, and made a key decision: he converted the navy from coal to oil, purchasing 51 per cent of a company, Anglo-Persian Oil, that had struck oil four years earlier. Iran, ruled by the Qajar shahs, recently weakened by a revolution, became vital to British power, as the possession of oil now became essential to great powers. ‘Mastery itself,’ declared Churchill, ‘was the prize.’
