Relations between Italy and Britain, even after Mussolini's seizure of power, remained entirely satisfactory within the framework of their traditional partnership in European affairs until the Ethiopian crisis of 1935. It is, however, well known that the first strains in the relationship rcame only in the period from July to October 1935, when British naval forces were concentrated in the Mediterranean. This particular episode as the Italo-Ethiopian crisis, occasionally referred to as ‘The Italo-Ethiopian emergency in the Mediterranean’, has been the subject of several untested and misleading assumptions made by historians whose attention has been focused almost solely on the international aspects of the Ethiopian crisis. This review is wholly based on Anglo-Italian records.