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Hugo Swire MP, chairman of the Advisory Committee on Works of Art

• Burn baby burn

Joel Meadows

• The oldest snowboarder in town

Gil Paterson MSP

• If I were Prime Minister... Tim Vine

Tony's Ten Years: Memories of the Blair Administration

Adam Boulton

Simon & Schuster £17.99

 

Reviewed by Sir Menzies Campbell, MP for North East Fife and former leader of the Liberal Democrats

Adam Boulton has been around Westminster longer than most (or it seems like that) and this is reflected in a volume which honestly describes itself in its subtitle as "Memories" rather than history or biography. "Memories"
allow for subjective recollection and afford the author some licence to link fact and opinion without the need to make clear the distinction between the two.

 

The focus throughout of course is Tony Blair, his personality, his performance and passing. Some others like Alastair Campbell merit extensive discussion but only so far as they are supporting actors to the star of the show. As the book reveals, and as history will confirm, Tony Blair was the 'star' of the show in his government. He dominated party, cabinet and country to the same effect but not in the same manner as Margaret Thatcher. So called 'sofa government' afforded him near presidential status and as Boulton carefully records, Blair's meticulously planned exit strategy was designed at least by those closest to him to maintain that aura no matter how contradictory of Britain's constitutional tradition it might be.

 

But with that dominance went responsibility. If you are 'Primus' without any 'pares' you win all the medals but have to take all of the blame. By the time Blair left office, party, cabinet and country were ready to bid farewell. Adam Boulton tracks Blair's ten years from the promise of May 1997 through to the anticlimax of July 2007 as someone who had access and infl uence but who nonetheless was the occasional victim of the ruthless news management of the Blair administration. The accounts of that management make an interesting prologue to Tony Blair's speech in his last few weeks when he compared some journalists to "feral beasts". I fancy that there were occasions during the Blair administration when journalists who caught the rough edge of Alastair Campbell's tongue felt similar emotions.

 

The device chosen by Boulton takes the last three months of Blair's Premiership, the last 100 days as it were, and explores the previous ten years from what happened during that period as he took his long, studied goodbye. The book is driven by subject not chronology. That is why to be an insider is an advantage. Breadth of knowledge and nuance are important. Those whose principal interest is Ireland, for example, will find contained in the chapter entitled Devolution a remarkable essay on the progress from the Good Friday Agreement to the present day. Adam Boulton is generous to his subject as well he might be because Blair's determination to make progress, aided by his remarkable ability to make everyone, however partisan, believe that he was on their side alone, was one of his greatest achievements. What frustrated Paddy Ashdown was ideal for Trimble and Paisley, McGuinness and Adams. When progress was halted or disrupted Blair simply carried on as if nothing had happened. He had a brave confidence founded on his belief that everyone could be persuaded. And so it proved in Ireland. Boulton's conclusion is that his every action "had been hallmarked with pragmatism and sophistry" but he won the day.

 

That same confidence brought success in Sierra Leone and Kosovo, but not in Iraq. It gave rise to both Blair's legacy and epitaph - Iraq is the overwhelmingly dominant theme in his premiership. It blots out so much of what needs to be understood about Tony Blair - the journey he went on from social democracy to Christian democracy, his reconciliation of the apparent contradiction in 'if it works we will do it', and 'because it is the right thing to do'. As this book written at close quarters reveals, Blair never allowed private doubt to undermine public certainty.

 

But the enigma for those who thought they knew Blair was his relationship with George W. Bush. Boulton makes an honest attempt to explain that relationship, but like so many of us who had bit parts in the Iraq episode it is unfathomable. For many observers the "Yo, Blair" episode, recounted in detail here may have been only too revealing. Adam Boulton's "Memories" are not intended to be the definitive account of the Blair years but they show rare insight and direct experience. Anyone who wants to set Blair's place in history in its proper context should begin with Boulton.

 

Black President

Rick Schmidt

Picnic, £9.99

Review by Keith Simpson, MP for Mid Norfolk
This novel took several years to come to fruition. The author says he wrote the first draft pre-9/11 and he has now published it at a significantly opportune moment in the history of the US Presidency.

 

Schmidt's novel is in the finest tradition of 'faction' blending historical figures and events with those of his imagination. He uses as his vehicle for the plot JFK's well known promiscuity, and the novel opens with the President's seduction of a devout, married, African-American woman. Within two and a half years of the couples only tryst, JFK is assassinated. The son born of their union rises from poverty to attain America's highest political office.

 

The novel is quite cleverly written and Schmidt skilfully blends fact and fi ction with guest appearances from Marilyn Monroe, J Edgar Hoover and Martin Luther King. MPs will have from the 18 December until 12 January for their Christmas recess, which, in between their family and constituency duties, provides opportunities to relax or stretch the 'little grey cells' with some improving reading.

Total Politics books editor Keith Simpson guides us through the Christmas book market

 

Angus Hawkins has published the second volume of his magisterial biography of The Forgotten Prime
Minister: The 14th Earl of Derby: Achievement, 1851-1869 (Oxford University Press, £30.00). Derby was the longest serving party leader in our modern political history and was thrice, briefly, Prime Minister. Squeezed between the giants Peel and Disraeli, nevertheless, he helped to educate the Tory Party and made Disraeli's leadership possible. Not perhaps a light read for those going on the All-Party Surf and Sand trip.

Political biography of a more contemporary politician is David Torrance's George Younger A Life (Birlinn, £30.00). George Younger served as Secretary of State for Scotland and then Defence in the 1980s. A consensual politician, he managed to bridge the divide between 'drys' and 'wets' in the Thatcher government.

 

Sir David Mitchell is the stuff made Tory MPs of an older generation 'knights of the shires'. A successful businessman who entered politics in the spirit of public service he has written a delightful memoir From House to House: The Endless Adventure of Politics and Wine (The Memoir Club, £18.00), about a life in politics but with a broad hinterland of other interests including El Vino wine bars.

 

Bernard Donoughue served in Downing Street as head of the Policy Unit under Wilson and then Callaghan. He has written several books about that experience and only thirty years later published his diaries. Those dealing with the Wilson period were fascinating about the politics and depressing about the personalities, especially the decline
of Wilson.

 

Now Downing Street Diary: Volume 2, With James Callaghan in No. 10 (Jonathan Cape, £30.00) gives us an insider's perspective of the Callaghan government and the tremendous battering it underwent from economic and political crises - a must read for government ministers today.

 

David Marquand's biography of Ramsay Macdonald is now out of print but was a brave attempt to rehabilitate a hate figure in Labour history. His Britain Since 1918: The Strange Career of British Democracy (Weidenfield and Nicholson, £25.00) is a thoughtful and thought provoking book looking at the broad sweep of British politics and political ideas. Chris Moncrieff is effectively 'Father of the Press Gallery', and his memory of politicians and political life at Westminster is rich and deep. Wine,Women and Westminster: Behind the Scenes Stories of MPs at Play over 50 years (JR Books, £14.99) is a wonderful potpourri of anecdotes and stories.

 

Those of us who are practising politicians, and in some cases practice doesn't make perfect, will be amused and yet cringe at Matthew PArris and Phil Mason's Mission! Accomplished! Things Politicians Wish They Hadn't Said (JR Books, £8.99) with its tales of public utterances that have come back to haunt them.

 

Former cabinet Minister, governor of Hong Kong and EU commissioner, Chris Patten has long been of Westminster's 'Great and Good.' In What Next? Surviving the Twenty-First Century (Allen Lane £25.00) he has written a series of essays about some of the themes which have dominated out lives, from terrorism to modern capitalism. Something of 'the curate's egg', this book will both enthuse and annoy readers.

 

Unlike some historians whose published research becomes narrower and narrower, Niall Ferguson goes for big issues and subjects with determination and brio. In The Ascent of Money: A Financial History of the World (Allen Lane, £25.00) Ferguson provides an essential historical 'bluffer's guide' for those groping feebly through the ups and downs of the current economic difficulties. Ferguson explains how fi nancial history is essentially the result of institutional mistakes and natural selection. Stimulating, provocative, and at times wrong, this is a book which is a must for the Christmas stockings of Alistair Darling, George Osborne and Vince Cable.

 

The politics of the conflict in Afghanistan frequently became subsumed within tactical military memoirs and the blame game. David Loyn is an experienced foreign correspondent, mainly with the BBC, and his Butcher and Bolt: Two Hundred years of Foreign Engagement in Afghanistan (Hutchinson, £18.99) is a broad sweep of history with some invaluable lessons highlighted, not least the obtuse short-termism of outside powers.

 

American politics have very much been front and centre in a year dominated by the Presidential election. Bronwen Maddox In Defence of America (Duckworth, £14.99) and Justin Webb Have a Nice Day (Short Books, £14.99) are experienced journalists with considerable knowledge of America and American politics. In a period when it has been fashionable to love to hate President Bush and the US, these authors, in different ways, comment on, explain and defend a larger America rich in ideas and democratic traditions.

 

Sadly, some ungrateful American colonists rejected the authority of His Majesty King George III and eventually seceded from the British Crown. In The Eagle and the Crown: Americans and the British Monarchy (Yale University Press, £25.00) Frank Prochaska shows that the American Founding Fathers were more monarchical in their thinking than had been assumed. They created what Theodore Roosevelt later called an "elective king" in the office of President. With a wonderful irony, he shows that in turn Americans fell in love with the transcendent glamour of a hereditary monarchy epitomised by the British Royal Family.

 

'Books of the TV series' are now very popular and Simon Schama has become the doyen in this historical field. His The American Future: A History (The Bodley Head, £20.00) develops four themes in the development of America - belligerence, fervour, ethnicity and plenty - and is a blend of history and anecdote. It is a celebration of America and Schama is an enthusiastic supporter of Barack Obama.

 

Robert Reich is a professor at Berkeley and served as Secretary of Labour under Bill Clinton. His Supercapitalism: The Battle for Democracy in an Age of Big Business (Icon Books, £12.99) argues that capitalism needs to be reined in through regulation and taxation. But this is not a simplistic attack on the market economy and Reich understands that restricting the market is not cost free.

 

Warren Buffett is a free enterprise icon. Arguably the world's greatest investor with an estimated worth of $62bn, Buffett, a frugal consumer, made his money by careful investment and risk taking. Seen as a capitalist who got it right with his scepticism about the dot com bubble and derivatives, Buffett was happy to have this massive life story written by Alice Schroeder. But The Snowball: Warren Buffett and the Business of Life (Bloomsbury, £25.00) is worth reading despite its length and a tendency to be a hagiography.

 

The American journalist Bob Woodward has been given unique access to President George W Bush and his latest book The War Within: A Secret White House History, 2006 - 2008 (Simon Schuster, £18.99), uses interviews with Bush and leading members of the administration to examine the debates over the Iraq War from 2006 to the summer of 2008. This book complements his three previous works, Bush at War (2002), Plan of Attack (2004) and State of Denial (2006).

 

Vice President Dick Cheney has been cast frequently in the role of the behind the scenes evil influence on President George W Bush. Barton Gellman's Angler: The Shadow Presidency of Dick Cheney (Allen Lane, £25.00) is not a simplistic diatribe attacking the Vice President, but a critical analysis of a politician of deep conviction and remorseless will who reshaped his offi ce and had real influence.

 

Spin doctors are not new, Roman emperors used them but they were known as poets and historians. Now they are part of the fabric of life and operate in politics, business, sport and celebrity promotion. James Harding's Alpha Dogs: How Spin Became a Global Business (Atlantic Books, £22.00) is about the highly successful Sawyer Miller Group of spin doctors who worked for politicians and corporate leaders, and included at one time Mark Malloch Brown, now a foreign office minister. Originally idealists, they soon became tainted by the more unsavoury aspects of their trade.

 

Given the banking crisis and recession many politicians have turned to look at the Wall street crash of 1929 and the ensuing slump. Anthony J Badger's FDR: The First Hundred Days (Hill and Wang, £16.99) is a short analytical account of Roosevelt's first fifteen weeks in office. Demolishing many myths about this period Badger shows that Roosevelt energised Washington and inspired bankers, industrialists, farmers and ordinary Americans, and took as his yardstick the politics of the possible under the guidance of principle. Remembering of course that the New Deal stalled in 1938 and was only saved from failure by the mobilisation for war.

 

Political fiction often involves a judicious mix of known facts and historical characters with those of the novelist's imagination. Robert Harris's book The Ghost is the superb example of this genre. Rick Schmidt's Black President (Picnic Publishing, £9.99) has the love child of JFK and an African-American woman defy the odds and rise from poverty to America's highest political office.

 

One 'golden oldie' worth reading is Anthony Trollope's The Way We Live Now, originally published in 1875 and now reprinted yet again by Oxford Paperbacks at £7.99. It was savagely reviewed when first published but is now regarded as one of Trollope's finest novels in which he castigates immortality and dishonesty in politics, fi nance and society. The perfect literary escapism before the recession bites in the New Year.