Total Politics 2010 Election Map

Total Politics - because knowledge is power

Surprisingly, there’s still a market for political memoirs and diaries. However, there is a real distinction between those that sell well and remain in print and those which bomb and are consigned to the ignominy of the remaindered bookshelves.

 

Of course, we are told that politicians are universally held in contempt - just above journalists - and most of us lead such mind-numbingly dreary lives that nobody could possibly want to read a political memoir or diary. There is a sharp divide between the memoirs of premier league politicians, particularly in government and especially PMs and those in the first and second divisions of the cabinet. It is much harder for politicians to interest publishers if their careers have been spent in opposition, and sadly, that seems to have happened to Menzies Campbell's memoirs. Exceptions to these rules are politicians who have become public figures or national treasures or are prepared to write about their flamboyant private life.

 

Gordon Brown prides himself on his appetite for political books. He may not appreciate the irony that just when he is going through a period of what Macmillan called "little local difficulties", three personalities from the Blair era have published their memoirs in the finest tradition of ‘kiss and tell’ - Cherie Blair, John Prescott and Lord Levy.

 

As with all political memoirs the question of timing is crucial because this involves profit and royalties. Precisely because of Gordon Brown and the government's difficulties these three different figures have been persuaded to publish now. A crucial part of the sales is newspaper serialisations.

 

We have a short memory if we think the vulgar profit motive is new. Both Lloyd George and Churchill knew exactly how much their memoirs were worth and looked to maximise their profits through serialisations and reprints.

 

Prime Ministers can write, or have ghost written, fairly tedious memoirs and yet still sell well. Margaret Thatcher's The Downing Street Years sold well over 500,000 hardback copies. Even Edward Heath, who only got round to publishing his memoirs in 1998, enjoyed good sales.

 

And that leads to another important but frequently overlooked aspect determining the success of any political memoir - are they well written? Do they encourage the reader to turn the page? And do they consist of more than tedious lists of meetings and speeches?

Denis Healey's The Time of My Life certainly falls into the positive category, not least because he had a ‘hinterland’ of interests beyond politics. In a different way, Douglas Hurd's Memoirs were an elegant example of a political memoir with subtle analysis and opinions and delphic criticism. Their counterpoint is Mo Mowlam's Momentum which was gutsy, intemperate and almost too full of personal details - just like Mo.

 

Political diaries have a long and irreverent tradition in Britain going back to at least Samuel Pepys, who, although not strictly speaking a politician, was certainly a Whitehall insider - Alastair Campbell without attitude!

 

Why do politicians keep a diary? Like other people; as a record, the desire for immortality, to be a witness, as a confessional, to let off steam, and of course with an eye to publication and profit. Two important questions should be considered when reading diaries - when were they written or recorded and what has been edited out and why?

 

Alan Clark was pleasantly surprised at the success of his first volume of diaries. He published them for profit and a desire for fame. He had an insatiable appetite for political diaries, and particularly enjoyed the louche diaries of the Tory MP ‘Chips’ Channon, which had been heavily edited to exclude his bisexual relations and the drama of the abdication of King Edward VIII, still controversial at the time of publication in 1967.

 

Clark once told a colleague that the secret of any successful diary lay in "the rule of the four 'I's' - it should be immediate, indiscreet, intimate and indecipherable".

 

Good news for aficionados is that next year the Labour MP and former minister Chris Mullin is to publish his diaries. Mullin said: "I have wasted no time in feuds and vendettas. I cannot claim to have led a life as colourful as Alan Clark or to have been as well connected as Alistair Campbell. My only claim is to have provided a snapshot of political life in the first part of the 21st century. Not just who said what to whom, but what it felt like to be there". Political historians, if not celebrity booksellers, will say ‘Amen’ to that.