[1] Lamb's doctoral thesis on the history of the Younghusband Expedition was published in 1960 by Routledge & Kegan Paul as the book Britain and Chinese Central Asia: The Road to Lhasa 1761 to 1905.
[3] The book was revised and published in 1986 under a new title, British India and Tibet: 1766-1910, by bringing it up to the events of 1910 based on newly released archival documents.
Lamb has stated that he came across a number of documents in the archive which looked "rather different" from the versions published by the Indian Ministry of External Affairs.
Through the mediation of Dorothy Woodman, Lamb managed to meet a senior official in the Indian High Commission in London in order to bring these facts to India's notice.
[10] Journalist and scholar Andrew Whitehead cited Alastair Lamb among historians of eminence, whose work is however tarnished by partisan comment.
Lamb points out rightly that China had never ratified the Simla Convention which contained the definition of the McMahon Line but he dismisses the question of whether the British and Tibetan governments were competent to conclude the agreement.
Rose also notes that Lamb seems annoyed at the fact that the authorities of independent India do not follow the British imperial line, which he terms "out of place".
[15] Parshotam Mehra, calling the two-volume work a "herculean effort", nevertheless labels it an "outright partisan attempt at demolishing the Indian case and thereby lending countenance to, and buttressing, the Chinese claims."
Munro sees that Lamb refutes India's claim on Kashmir and seriously indicts Indian actions, leaders and also his own countryman, Mountbatten.
"[20] Historian Hugh Tinker notices that Alastair Lamb explains Kashmiri political history in a "masterly style."
[21] Copland observes that Lamb's analysis of the Kashmir conflict is the most detailed and describes his work as a "considerable feat of scholarship."
He also points out how Lamb glosses over the culpability of Pakistan in the 1947 crisis as well as in later developments, facts which scholars such as Ayesha Jalal admit.
The path of reason, which this study sadly spurns, is to map out the common ground...[22]Prem Shankar Jha, in his Kashmir 1947: Rival Versions of History, tried to provide a detailed critique of the contentious aspects of Lamb's treatment of the Kashmir dispute,[23] although David Taylor points out that while providing alternative readings on some points, Jha does not manage to entirely refute Lamb.
However, he states that in his later work, Birth of a Tragedy, Lamb "overreached" by claiming that the Maharaja of Jammu and Kashmir never signed the Instrument of Accession at all.