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Books : Biography : Political : Political Leaders & Leadership : Britain : Liberalism
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John Major's rise to the post of British prime minister is a puzzle of modern politics that his lengthy autobiography fails to resolve. It is clear, as we follow him from his modest origins in south London to his work as a local councillor and his remarkable ascent at Westminster under the eye of Margaret Thatcher, that he was driven by a determination to prove himself. But now that we are growing used to the messianic zeal that Tony Blair brings to the role of prime minister, it seems extraordinary that John Major should have achieved the position with such little evident vision or relish. Here is the man we thought we knew, decent, hard-working; at the mercy of events rather than their master.So we find him bowed down by the misfortunes of an ungrateful world, rendered defensive by problems with the economy, by arguments over Europe, by the intractability of politicians in Northern Ireland, by attacks from within his own party.
With that same party busy airbrushing him from its history--despite his unlikely victory over Neil Kinnock in 1992--it's as well he has got his account into print, an unstuffy telling of a fascinating story that is free of the pomposity that affects so many of his political peers and which reveals a deep-seated belief in the value of basic decency. "I will not concede possession of the recent past to the mythographers of left or right who have every self-interest in retouching the history we made," he says.
But how sad to find him still so defensive and so bitter about the slights of others, still anxious to explain why speeches or gestures were misconstrued. "I was too conservative, too conventional. Too safe, too often. Too defensive. Too reactive," he says. But could he have been anything else? --Kim Fletcher
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When Enoch Powell died in February 1998, British politics lost one of its most remarkable and intelligent figures. A controversial politician, Powell is most widely remembered for his infamous "Rivers of Blood" speech on immigration in 1968 while the Labour government was trying to pass its race relations legislation. He was sacked from the Shadow Cabinet as a result of the ensuing outcry. Whatever the consequences for race relations in Britain--and many would still maintain that Powell helped to engender a climate of fear and mistrust in which National Front activity steadily increased for more than a decade afterwards--the speech destroyed Powell's political career.In a controversial account of a controversial man, Heffer goes some way towards rescuing Powell from demonisation--though there's no getting away from how hilariously curmudgeonly he often was. He seemed to spend his entire childhood being 81 years old; Heffer's account of the proud, spiky Classical scholar (Powell's precocity in this area was astonishing) poncing about like Socrates, his flirtation with morbid German Romanticism and his desire for war, and his success in the army despite his mannerisms and brusque, self- assured superiority do eventually make him a human, almost sympathetic character; but one is not always sure that Heffer is right to attribute irony to Powell's more drastic remarks rather than, say, arrogance or naivety.
What Heffer has done--remarkably swiftly, given that he only saw Powell's most personal papers after his death--is to provide an enormous, well-sourced and sympathetic biography of a towering yet flawed figure. It has wit and an attention to detail that would have pleased the pedantic Powell in his guise of scholar. The youngest ever British professor, promoted from private to brigadier during World War Two, and a much-loved politician for two parties, Powell also wrote tolerable romantic poetry (in the mould of A.E. Housman). One is left with a sense of sadness that such an intelligent and hard-working man was so coldly intellectual as never to appreciate the appalling consequences of his discussion of race and immigration. Whether or not Powell was a racist (and even his enemies seem to have doubted this) his ideas were received rapturously by those who were. But there was more to the man than that; and this is a surprisingly engaging portrait of a sometimes disagreeable genius. --Robert Potts
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Michael Heseltine will be forever associated with dramatically toppling Margaret Thatcher as Prime Minister and Leader of the Conservative Party in November 1990. However, in Life in the Jungle, his eagerly awaited autobiography following departure from public office as Deputy Prime Minister in 1995, Heseltine has written an absorbing account of life in the thick of the Westminster jungle over the last quarter of a century. This is a long but never dull book that covers Heseltine's adolescent struggle with dyslexia, presidency of the Oxford Union, his forays into the property world, the formation of his successful publishing group Haymarket, and early days as a junior minister in Edward Heath's administration. What is particularly engaging about the book is the sheer energy and scope of Heseltine's political initiatives, including selling Concorde, his courageous anti-racist positions in the aftermath of Enoch Powell's "rivers of blood" speech, urban regeneration in the inner cities, and selling off council houses. His entrepreneurial instincts consistently vindicate his belief that if his Conservative colleagues in the 1980s "had known more about the world as it is and not how theory says it ought to be, they might have been able to make more temperate and rational contributions to the great economic debate of the 1980s".The Thatcher years, and Heseltine's own sensational resignation over the Westland affair in 1986, are dignified but a little colourless. Thatcher's behaviour over Westland is viewed as "an affront to the standards of government in which I profoundly believed". The challenge to Thatcher in 1990 vividly recaptures the tense manoeuvrings for power that brought Heseltine within a whisker of the top job, whilst his account of the Major years offers engrossing but generous accounts of his by then junior colleagues, and his final startling dalliance with a challenge for the leadership following the resignation of John Major. Life in the Jungle is a fascinating portrait of one of the most charismatic and principled Conservative politicians of recent decades, and is required reading for anyone interested in British politics in the latter half of the 20th century. --Jerry Brotton
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![Lloyd George: [2]: The People's Champion: [2]](http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/41SJTJBWDYL._SL160_.jpg)
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![Lloyd George: From Peace to War 1912-1916: [3]](http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/414WVACWMGL._SL160_.jpg)
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