The Kuwaiti crisis of 1961 has conventionally been accorded little attention in histories of Britain's role in the Middle East. In fact, the crisis was an important defining moment, focusing the minds of policymakers on British interests in the Gulf, and the question of the best means of preserving them. It was also the largest scale mobilization of British forces in the Middle East in the post‐Suez era. This article sets the crisis in the context of longer term British relations with Kuwait, internal developments in the Emirate, the evolution of British strategy in the region since Suez and Kuwaiti‐Iraqi relations in order to understand the significance of the episode.