120: Summer Books Special

Adam, Helen, Andy and the Eye's book reviewer D.J.Taylor recommend the greatest political biographies ever written, from Louis XIV to Nadine Dorries via Chips Channon. 

Episode Transcript

Maisie (00:00):
Page 94, the Private Eye Podcast

Andy (00:03):
Hello and welcome to another episode of page 94.
My name's Andrew Hunter Murray and I'mhere in the Private Eye office with
Helen Lewis, Adam McQueen and DJ Taylor.
We are here for our summer culturespecial, specifically books.
Don't expect any opera orany film or anything else.
The book special, you might belistening to this on a beach
you might have brought with you.

(00:24):
Oh I dunno.
A Jack Reacher, a James Patterson.
Or maybe the diaries of Chips Channon.
Let's hope, 'cause this is Page 94, we'regonna be talking about political books.
DJ writes a lot of the reviews,although obviously we can't confirm
which ones he does or doesn't write.
But DJ, you read a lot of politicalbooks, as well as One Direction memoirs
and things in your line of work.

DJ Taylor (00:45):
I do, and it's, quite interesting because whenever I propose
some kind of political tone for, the eye.
Ian, his lob always says, God, you'rethe only person I know who's in the least
interested in this terrible, substandard,disappearing, disparate genre.
And I think there is a way in whichthe, whole sort of atmosphere in which

(01:08):
political memoirs or books about politicsget wr, get written and received has
changed over the last few decades.
there used to be.
Big commercial propositions,minister ministerial memoirs
would be serialized for huge sumsof money, in Sunday newspapers.
and I always, the kind of touchstoneof this, the thing I always remember,
'cause I, lived and worked inLondon then, this is 30 years ago.

(01:31):
And my wife, who's thenworking at Harper Collins, who.
Paid a fortune for the two volumes of Mrs.
Thatcher's memoirs and the first one,which was the Downing Street years,
came out on a particular Thursday.
And I can remember standing at NottingHill Tube station and seeing the flash
of the powder blue cover all the waydown the platform from various people
who had bought it on the day it came out.

(01:52):
It was

Adam (01:53):
huge, wasn't it?
Yeah.
It was a big event that coming out.

DJ Taylor (01:56):
Yeah, and I can think of other sort of similar books and in
fact any, certainly in the nineties,any Tory politician who was, anyone
could expect a deal for his book.
Norman Fowler wrote a book calledMinisters Decide, which I, don't
think exactly set the wealth inringing, but, it was a thing.
And then.
It because it sort degener my imagination

Helen (02:16):
that it was the David Blanket memoir that was the last of those
incredibly big beast advances.

DJ Taylor (02:22):
I think they, I think one of the problems was that, of course
the, really, back in the day, 40, 50years ago, the really fruity ones,
the ones that were worth readingwere always about Labour politicians.
because I remember even, theboring ones, I remember reading
James Callahan's memoirs timeand Chance, that's very boring.

(02:42):
I they, yes.
But it's funny becauseof what he leaves out.
And the euphemism.
So you will get, you know when, youread what he writes about Barbara
Castle, A great soul, a fine socialist.
It was always a pleasure.
And when you think of how he completelystitched her up as soon as he became
Prime Minister, it's all very funny.
So it's one of those ratherDelphi books, which is great.
It's funny for its emissions,for what it doesn't say.

(03:03):
but then you came, of course,Labour was then out of office.
No one was really interestedin the Labour Party for years.
The Tories are always much more boring.
They don't tend to make as good politicalmemoirs or exposes as they used to.
And then there came a time in theearly two thousands when they were
so boring that no books were written.
remember, I remember the story.
I remember the eye featuringthis story over 20 years ago.
When somebody proposed to writea biography of William Hague and

(03:25):
there were no takers, no publisherwould've prepared to put up the money.
So it, I don't think it actually happened.
and but I think it's just,generally we are less interested.
We know more about politicianson a kind of day-to-day business
simply because of the, on rush ofsocial media and knowing more about.
People's private lives, generally.
In the old days, you didn'treally know very much about them.

(03:45):
you knew, they were the formal careers.
And if you wanted to know what hadactually happened, in Parliament and how
MPS had compiled and got together, youquite often had to wait for the memoir
to find out about it, rather than seeingit in your newspaper the next morning.
It wasn't in WhatsApp.
no, there wasn't a WhatsApp group.
And so it was all fascinating.
And so when, when the survivors of theLabour Party, the, the Labour Party

(04:08):
and elegance of the early eightiesactually began to write about what had
happened at conferences and how unionshad come together and the block vote
had done something, and how one man,one vote had been chucked out because
one trade union leader was down the pub.
You tended not to find out untilthe memoirs were written, and I
think there's been a sea change.
I dunno.
Helen, what do you say?
But Only bears

Helen (04:28):
a journey is quite good if you want.
Pre like into Labour beefand don't quote the bit of it
that, that I, that upsets me.
I do.
I

Adam (04:36):
devoured her.
No, I needed her.
just those words every time.
It's just every,

Helen (04:42):
it's like your George N'Golo cat impersonation.
She makes me feel very tense.
But, yeah, I know what you mean.
That there is a, what's happened,into that gap has now come the bite
back model, which is that bite backas a small publishing house owned by
Lord Ashcroft will just pound out ata biography of absolutely everybody.
So there's one, actually thetitle of, Barbara Castle's.
red Queen in biography of hers hasbeen repurposed for, Angela Rayna.

(05:04):
That's the new AngelaRayna one from Bite Back.
There's now a Kemi Badenoch one comingout because the assumption is that she
might win the Tory leadership race, butthey are done in this very particular way.
I remember me, her, mycolleague wrote one of them.
About Ed Miller Band and I offeredto give him the pull quote, if you
only read one biography of Ed MillerBand this year, make it this one.
which he declined sadly.
But the model was very upfront aboutthe fact that you tried to find a

(05:27):
couple of good news stories in it aboutit that no one had ever done before.
And you would, then get a decent amountof money from either the Sunday Times
or the mail and Sunday for an extract.
So they were written in avery different way rather than
being a kind of work of art.
They were written with a kind of specificintention to make money from that.
I

Adam (05:41):
think you're right to identify the David Blanket book as being one of
the turning points on that 'cause therewere two problems with that really.
One of which was that it came off theback of all of the shagging stories.
when he was revealed to be thegovernment's most unlikely Mr.
Lover man in sort of 2004, 2005, hadto resign from, the cabinet was given.
I think I.
Think I'm right in sayingit was Harper Collins.
It's usually Harper Collinswith all the big ion.
It usually was Harper Collins, and itwas part of a deal that he did with his

(06:02):
great friend, Rebecca, Rebecca Brooks,which also earned him the, most boring
column in the sun for a few years afterthat as well, which got further and
further back in the book every week.
'cause it was, so tedious.
but, as part of that deal, he retained,he had a very good agent who retained
the serialization rights, which hadbecome, even by that point, I think,
the way that you made money on books.

(06:22):
So it was fairly disastrous for thepublishers, I think in that case.
It's

DJ Taylor (06:26):
interesting you should make that point about the blanket
memoirs because, quite, serendipitouslythe other night I came across.
A column I wrote for theIndependent on Sunday in 2010.
So that's 14 years ago.
And the column was complaining aboutPeter Mandelson's memoirs, which were,
full of the, full of that kind of thing.
and naming names and, dissing people.

(06:49):
He didn't like.
And I complained in the column that thiswas an example of what I call the celebr
ratification of the political memoir.
Whereas people previously, people hadsaid what they thought had happened.
Discretely, and or sometimes notdiscretely if it was a Labour politician.
And now you have this kind ofconscious clamoring from the, for the
limelight that hadn't previously, Ithink been a feature of the political

Adam (07:10):
memoir.
There's only a few years before that thefirst lot of Alistair Campbell diaries
came out, which were build as extractsfrom, because he'd specifically left
out all of the Blair, Brown Wall stuff.
Even, then, brown was still in power and.
Alistair Campbell being a Labour manthrough and through was not gonna
do anything to compromise that.
You are

DJ Taylor (07:25):
Even then, stuff was being el I think.
and if you wanted to and to also too, ifyou were writing, if you were a biographer
of one of these people, again, your tonedhad tended to be very feline and deft.
I always remember reading.
With great, I think in fact was so funny.
I think he ended up parroting it ratherthan reviewing it was, which was Philip

(07:45):
Ziegler's book about Edward Heath.
And it was clear that Ziegler, who Ithink had known Heath when he was a
foreign office clerk in the 1950s, hadnever really got over the experience.
And, you, I've never read aerythat damned anybody with quite
such faint praise as did that.
But it was all very, I saydone in a very thin line way.
And and it would be, there werethose who might criticize Mr.

(08:07):
Heath for his aloof aloofnessand his glacial qualities.
But talking to Mrs.
Enit Smith, who used to serve him teain the house of comment, he said, she
said he was quite a nice man, I believe.
And he said the paragraph wouldfalter to a close with this one,
and it was beautifully done.
But you would've had to haveknown your politics and known.
known how irony works to have appreciatedexactly what Ziegel was doing.

(08:30):
But that's old school.
the, whole atmosphere in which subject.
subject, publisher andwriter began about it.
it's, although it was published inthe 2000, its last century, I think.
No, but

Andy (08:41):
this is what I was curious about is which is more revealing and in which ways?
if it's someone telling their own storyversus unauthorized or unauthorized
biography, they'll tell different.

DJ Taylor (08:51):
you've led me, I think to the, book I was going to choose as one of my
favorite political biographies because atthe time it was genuinely innovative and
the perspective was genuinely innovative.
there had been, there had, previously,back in the sixties and beyond, there
had been books, biographies of deadpoliticians written by their relics.

(09:11):
The one I was gonna choose because itreally wasn't eye-opener for the time.
It was published in the early 1980s.
And that's Susan Crosslands barof her husband, Tony Crossland,
Labour Foreign Secretary.
Died in office, in 19.
I was a schoolboy at the time.
I remember the great shock thathe'd only been, her secretary of
State for about a year and a half.
Dropped down dead, one weekend at hiscountry place and, at the age of 59.

(09:34):
And she wrote this very intimatememoir, which didn't pull any
punches about how awful he could.
Be about what a womanizer he could beabout how he rubbed people's backs up
about how he could have been Labourleader had he not been so abrasive and
annoyed everybody and been so arrogant.
And, it really was a and, anabsolutely, eyewitness account

(09:56):
because she was there of his dying.
Which is not something you would everget in any, any standard biography.
And so it was a real, for 1983 or whateverit was written, it was a real innovation
and stand and stands up even today becauseyou learn, about the workings of politics,
in a way that you don't elsewhere.
Because Crossman will come homefrom Ka and say, bloody Tony, Ben.

(10:16):
I taught him at Oxford.
He was a complete credit inthen, or no, I'm exaggerating.
But, Crosson was the manwhom when, Tony Benu had.
Been his politics pupil.
'cause Crossland wasbriefly an Oxford dawn.
And on one occasion in the 1960s, Benannounced with great ceremony, from his
media appearances that he was determined,he had determined to slough off, the

(10:37):
reputation of being, being an intellectualto which Crossland said, to s slough off
a reputation, first necessary to have one.
And so that was the kind of.
Thing of which he was capable.
Those seventies,

Helen (10:46):
memoirs aren't like that was, that is a particularly rich period, isn't it,
of political biographies and memoirs.
I decided not for once to Fay withmy thoughts on Barbara Castle, but
Howard Wilson did once complain thatbasically he would sit around the
cabinet table and they were all.
Taking notes.
'cause Tony Ben was writing diaries.
There's Crossland Diaries.
Barbara Castle's had bigchunky volumes of diaries.
So they, I dunno, why was it that is

Adam (11:07):
annoying.

Helen (11:08):
Why was it Adam?
He

Adam (11:09):
couldn't talk.
He had a deal from Biden FeltonNicholson before he'd even left
Downing Street the first time.
That's right.
He was knocking out a book for them.
Yes.
Okay.
So

Andy (11:16):
if we're pick, I mean I have said the format at the start, we're gonna pick
each of us one Desert Island politicalmemoir, and then when we're, cast away.
Presumably the four of us together,we're gonna have four books, which
we can pass around between us.
So have, you settled on that?
I've settled on, I'm sorry to jumpthe gun, but Yeah, I would because

DJ Taylor (11:33):
I, I would settle on the Crossman because it is so entertaining.
And if you want the real low down on thosetwo periods of when Labour is in office,
late sixties late seventies that they,that really is a kind of how to guide from
someone who observed it all very, closehand without being a politician herself.
That's a good though.
And also being American too.
Okay.
So yeah, she was American Susan.
Crosson.

(11:53):
So you get a very interestingkind of, my God, what is this?
Occasionally.
Oh, very nice.
And Tony will come and explainsomething and, she'll say, you
mean you do that over here?
And so that too is rather, soyou've got both the outside

Adam (12:04):
of you and the under, very much the inside of you as well.
Works

Andy (12:07):
perfectly.
Bell, Bryson.
Hey, good.
Anyway, Helen, who, how about yours?

Helen (12:12):
I have picked the Sun King by Nancy Mitford, which is her biography
of Louis XIV and the building ofVersailles, and it does a couple of
things that are really interesting.
One, it talks about thestultifying levels of.
Etiquette and the court precedentsthat be that overwhelmed the French
aristocracy, due to the idea thatLibby the 14th could have lived in the
Louvre and could have lived in Paris.

(12:33):
Instead, he decided to liveout in the countryside.
And there's this phrase used actually inher biography of Madame de Pompadour about
cooping up all of the French aristocratsin a perpetual house party at Versailles.
And you can really see inthat, because he was a great.
Totalizing leader, he, was centralizedall power to himself and he gathered
everyone who might have possibly been arival power base around himself, but the
French became, the aristocracy, becameso divorced from the, what was actually

(12:57):
happening that at that point, whenyou then go to the next King Louis the
15th, he was a little bit less good, andthen Lou, the 16th, he was terrible at
managing that state bureaucratic machine.
You can see that actually insome ways, the building of
Versailles, the kind of first.
Domino that falls, that endswith the French Revolution.
And because, this is the woman whowrote about, you and non she was

(13:17):
very attuned to ideas about cast.
She's unbelievablyfascinating on the madness.
It was a huge deal about whatkind of seat you were allowed to
sit on in the King's presence.
So if you were low ranking noble,you might get a little like ottoman
or you might get a chair next.
If you've got a chair with a back thenyou were like, really one of the big boys.
Oh, okay.
Ditto.
If you were a Prince of the bloodroyal, you could put your, kneeling

(13:38):
stool straight on in chapel.
Everyone else would have it crookedand they would spend all their time in
chapel like nudging it towards untilsomeone would look at them and go.
Come on.
only the Prince of Condeis allowed to do that.
It's, absolutely fascinating and it'sincredibly heavy details, but it also
gives you a portrait of an absolutemonarch and why that can sometimes
be a brilliant thing if your absolutemonarch is good at running the country,

(14:03):
but also it can be completely fatal.
Thing.
And that is the joybeing an absolute ruler.
You were in charge of absolutelyeverything until you are

DJ Taylor (14:09):
beheaded.
And of course, she broughther own mitford desk.
Tamra to do you know what?
Raymond Mortimer, the Bloomsbury criticonce asked Nancy Midford what she really
thought of Louis xiv, and her reply was.
Absolute heaven, darling.

Adam (14:23):
Can I say the chair thing doesn't stop either.
Famous diplomatic incident in theearly eighties when Francois Miron
comes over to Downing Street and getsvery cross about the idea that Mrs.
Thatcher is gonna get a chair with armson and he's gonna get one without arms.
And this is literally, thereare memos going back and forth
between the Eli Palace and DowneyStreet for weeks over this.
So

Helen (14:41):
I'm really not surprised.
'cause every time they have a statebanquet, people will slave over the
seating arrangements, that kind of stuff.
In politics now, there issuch an exquisite sense.
Of status, but I think if you don'tsee it from the inside you, it's
very hard to understand why people dothings that are otherwise illogical.
But everybody in politics has got thisexquisitely calibrated sense of who's up
and who's down, and they're constantlyworking within that environment.

(15:02):
It bleeds into absolutely everydecision that everybody makes is this
like constant antennae alertness.

Andy (15:08):
But we're like that in this office to be fair.
So true.
But we've all got arms on our chest.
Thank God.
I think there's only one chair

Adam (15:13):
with arms at the cabinet table.
There is.
That was the problem.
The Prime Minister has a chair with arms.
I see.
The meeting was in the cabinet room.
It was in the, I see.
And this was all explainedto, to, to president Miter on,
but he was having none of it.
He said, no, if she has armsthen I must have arms as well.
And the way they got round it wasto, put two armchair next to the,
next to the fireplace instead.
And not sit at the cabinet table.
All very clever.
See the art of compromise.

Andy (15:34):
Do you wanna hear a slightly, relevant Louis the 14th anecdote,
which does actually have echoesin politics from the last month.

Helen (15:40):
Yes, of course.
Of course.
I want to hear that.
Tell us.

Andy (15:42):
Louis IV, was a young-ish, middle-aged man, and he developed a
very painful, fistula in his bottom.
There was a gap where thereshouldn't have been a gap.
It was very painful, requires surgery.
the surgery was obviously veryrudimentary at the time, but, the
court appointed a surgeon who,practiced, researched, developed his

(16:03):
own tools to carry out this procedure.
It really was groundbreaking at the time.
Eventually carried out the procedure.
The king lived.
And, medicine had taken a bit ofa step forwards anyway because of
the way the court was at the time.
Some members of it, started claiming thatthey too had this terrible condition and

(16:24):
others, and this is where we come to theparallels with today, started wearing
bandages on their bottoms as if theyhad the same, fist year as Louis xiv.
And where does that bring us to?
It brings us to people wearingbandages on their ears.
As a tribute to DonaldTrump after he was shot.

Adam (16:41):
I think it brings you back to the intro to this podcast where he said, we're
gonna be talking about culture this week.
Somehow we got onto theKing of France's art.

Andy (16:48):
it just shows everything, everything echoes throughout eternity.
But that is

Helen (16:51):
one of the nice things about reading, like particularly 18th century,
memoirs and historical documents,is that people are very open about
bodily functions, and particularlywhen it comes to the king, right?
Whatever was happening with theking's body was everybody's business.
So you do get these?
Absolutely.
There's a really long discussionin one of the Chronicles about what
might be the problem with, Henry II's,penis, which goes on for some, it's

(17:13):
a subject to much debate at court,why he can't have any children.
Same thing with Louis the 16th.
there's just a kind of openness that.
We would now, it is more now like Ithink we took a kind of detour during
the Victorian age where people tried todelicately cover some of that stuff up.

Adam (17:26):
I think we're back to, Tony and Cherie now, aren't we?

Andy (17:33):
Welcome back, Adam.
We come to you.
it's gonna be Tony Blair's journey, isn'tit's not gonna be Tony Blair's a journey.
if I'm

Adam (17:39):
stuck on a desert island.
I don't want that image in my head.
No.
I've chosen two.
It's quite appropriate forDesert Island actually.
'cause they, there're about 600 pageseach, so I'm gonna be able to build a raft
at, and we really, no honorable mentionhas to go to, Michael Block's biography
of Jeremy Thorpe, which just has.
For as much as anything else, thebackstory behind it because, Michael
Block approached Jeremy Thorpe.
Now we all know one thing about JeremyThorpe, which is that he tried to have his
boyfriend shot and shot his dog instead.

Hubub (18:00):
Yeah.

Adam (18:01):
never talked about this.
lived in, he had Parkinson's diseasefor a very long time, retired
from public life, and was a bitof a mystery for all this time.
Michael Block approached him andpersuaded him to, cooperate with this
biography and persuaded other variousof his friends to speak as well.
But it was done on his urgent insistencewas the way Michael Block put it, that
it should not appear in his lifetime.

Andy (18:21):
Oh, okay.

Adam (18:22):
Jeremy Thorpe, everyone thought was a death door, then went on to
live for another quarter of a century.
So this manuscript, which is Red hot, Imean it's not just about Norman Scott.
It's about an awful lot of otherboyfriends as well, and FBI intercepting
letters from him to a boyfriendin San Francisco and affairs with
Guardsman and policemen and all.
it, it's a cracking, cracking tale to it.
I have to say to.
Slightly better and more concisely inJohn Preston's, very English scandal,

(18:45):
which was one that was adapted byRuss of t Davis into that TV drama.
but it is still a hellof a read, that one.
But, my, my biggie, my, top one I'mgonna, nominate is actually Chris Mullin.
he's done about four now, but the, thefirst volume of those was a view from the
Foothills, which gives, as we were talkingabout before, DJ, that sort of insider
outside view and for younger listeners.
Chris Mullin was a, LabourMP to the left of the party.

(19:08):
kind very much that, and he wasbrought in as a junior minister.
And this is one of the mostextraordinary things about him.
It makes you realize how much politicshas changed in the last 20 years.
He was a minister in, that enormousdepartment of transport in the regions
and local government and Priti mucheverything else that press over.
Yeah.
But along with Michael MEChA, whowas another of those figures, who
in today's Labour party, you justcannot imagine either of them
being brought into the tent at all.

(19:29):
But the really interesting thing aboutthis is that he knows, Chris Mullin
knows exactly why he's been broughtinto the tent, and that is because he
was a very, he was a sort of awkwardsquad back bencher who was head of the
home affairs committee and Tony Blair's.
A job offer to him is essentially isjust to bring him in and ensure that
he can't cause any more trouble on theback benches and shut him up for a bit.
So there's this tension throughouthis period as a minister, two, two

(19:51):
periods as a minister, which arecovered in this volume of him being
inside the government and having,being very much resenting it in a ways.
He actually starts off trying to turn downthe job and is persuaded by Tony Ba, who
he refers to all the way through as incapitals as the man, which is slightly.

Andy (20:06):
I think that's a good feature of lots of biographies.
In fact, story in general requiresyour protagonist to be so blackout
is a perfect example of it, right?
Because he's in the middle ofmost of the systems he is in.
There is someone to kick Baldrick andthere is someone above him who is tick by.
Yeah.
There's the general, there's the Prince orwhoever, and so that's a perfect example

(20:27):
of that, where there's a, there's a.
Attention and the structure.
You're not getting aview right from the top.
I think

Adam (20:31):
it's always much, much more interesting to hear from slightly
more junior people and slightly moreoutside people than it is from extremely
polished performers who've got an eyeto their, their post ministerial career
and, what boards they're gonna sit on.
Certainly,

Helen (20:42):
that's what I think.
It's not just a kind of Rosen krantsand giland a dead thing, which is.
Part of it, is it is actually moreinteresting to see the sideways view
onto the kind of very big events.
But I also think most successful, reallysuccessful politicians do not have a
lot of self-reflection and self-doubt.
It is not something thatis an asset in politics.
I just interviewed Tony Blair a coupleof weeks ago and he was, he's such
a convincing advocate for whateverhe's doing because he doesn't look

(21:04):
in the rear view mirror constantlyand rack his brains over all the
things that could have gone wrong.
And I think you have to have that.
Personality type, that verycharismatic, always looking forward.
I think people would say thesame about Thatcher, right?
Is that she didn't look backwards.
She was always onto the next thing.
It was forward.
And I think that characteristicmakes you a very bad writer, right?
So by definition, I think Chris Mullinis probably a good writer, but all

(21:26):
the things that made him a good writerprobably made him a bad minister.

DJ Taylor (21:29):
particularly the Mrs.
Thatcher's legendary.
Self-absorbed.
I remember, Charles Moore, whowrote the very good three volume,
the authorized life of Mrs.
Thatcher, saying that he was once,having family lunch with Mrs.
Thatcher and some small childrencame and pressed their faces against
the window and wait a minute.
And Mrs.
Thatcher was completelyflummoxed and just said.

(21:50):
What are they doing?
Why are they behaving in that way?
and Charles said that she clearly,despite having been a mother and lived,
seven years, had no idea of the way inwhich small children behaved and what you
they did if you let them outta the room.
And they were waving and this wascompletely baffling to her that.
That they might as well have been,might, apes jumping up and down
for the, and again, it's the selfabsorption, the complete focus.

(22:13):
the only thing is that the lightburning at the end of the tunnel
that you're moving towards.
And I, and it needs, it needs akind of, it needs a special kind
of, amanuensis or chronicler or,observer, I think to bring that off.
Probably.
I was gonna, what I was gonna mentionactually, apropos, and again, he stands

(22:34):
in a quite interesting relation tothe people that he's writing about.
Is Woodrow Wyatt's Three volumes ofpolitical diaries because Wyatt, although
Wyatt was an absolute, it might be

Helen (22:42):
who he was.
'cause I'm afraid all I'mgetting is probably a Tory
minister and father of Petro.
No,

DJ Taylor (22:46):
no.
Father Petro, no.
Woodrow White's a very interesting case'cause he was a Labour, he was a right
wing Labour MP in the fifties and sixties.
Lost his seat in 1970, becameand then converted in a, oh, he
was actually a cross bench pier.
But, an absolute.
Acolyte of Mrs.
Thatcher's and helped write herspeeches and as soon as Thatcher went,
immediately transferred himself to JohnMajor and was his kind of fact totem

(23:08):
and fixed major up with Rupert Murdoch.
and, was, and it was was actually it'snever mentioned in anybody's memoirs.
I think he gets one mention in Mrs.
Thatcher's two volumes, which I thinkhe would've been very sad about.
but he's always there and he sees themin their most sort of intimate moments.
He's very self-centreed.
He's always out, for what Woodrow and.

(23:29):
Can get outta these, but you do getunguarded moments where, Major will
suddenly drop his mask of niceness andsay something really quite catty about
someone like John Prescott or, and there,there really is a sense that there's a
sense of terrible sense of corruption,obviously in sleaziness and, things
happening because people in offices in thecity pick up the phone to their friend,

(23:49):
the Tory minister and, sorting things.
But there's a, it's,tremendously a fairy, I suppose

Helen (23:55):
If you read the chips Chan, the giant Simon Heifer
edited volumes of his diaries.
'cause what I, from what I read of thereviews of that, they said he's on,
he's just an figure on the peripheryof lots of extraordinary stuff.

DJ Taylor (24:06):
I would've said my own view of him, of chips would be that he
was never, he never imagined anythingpolitically despite his ambitions.
And so you, although he's, there, there'san awful lot of names turn up and that
he's quite perceptive, I think, aboutsome of the people he comes across.
But you are really, in terms of the reallybig issues, you're only getting crumbs.
I think from the tables of the Great.
That would be my

Andy (24:27):
thought.
I dunno what you think is there, just, isthere another thing about whether or not
these people are likable to the reader?
Does it matter?
Because a lot of the peoplewe've described are writing.
Unpleasant things about friends,colleagues, partners, whatever it is,
they don't all come across very well.
You're in a room full of journalists.
we're not gonna complain about that.
We do.
They have to have the, do theyhave to have the courage to be

(24:49):
unpleasant in order to guarantee

DJ Taylor (24:51):
a good book.
I suppose what I would say about that isthat you, you have to import into this.
If we are talking aboutpersona, which is what it.
Ultimately it's all about, youhave to import into this, the
literary idea, I suppose the AnthonyPoll idea of the personal myth.
If you can gauge either throughthe memoir or through the biography
what it was that they thought wasimportant about themselves and what

(25:14):
they were trying to project through,and the way in which their lives
politically or non-politically.
Were made bearable to them by the kindof myths about themselves that they
projected, then that's interesting.
And it makes even the most abrasiveor, unpromising looking subject appear.
it's take someone like John Prescott,whom no political memoir at the time has

(25:34):
a good word for, even John Major loath.
Prescott, this is the, you getthis in the Woodrow Wire Diaries.
But, Prescott had his personal myth.
he had the personal myth, he had thechip, he had the upbringing, he had, and
you can see him projecting it throughhis political life with sometimes very
unfortunate results, but sometimes withresults that are amusing and sometimes

(25:56):
results that tell you a great dealabout Prescott and the way that he.
Thought of conceived of himself.
and I find this is very useful.
It's it's like the JamesCallahan was exactly the same.
I remember, and this is a, it's funny,

Helen (26:10):
Jim in the memoir, isn't it?
When he is, as he, he's also shocking.
He acts about all thepeople that he hates.

DJ Taylor (26:14):
Let me tell you a story which is in highly germane because It, it's
to do with the Crossland memoir that,I, that we were just talking about.
And when I was a boy of 17 atschool, Callahan turned up at Norris
Cathedral and it was decided thathe ought to be introduced to the
young friends of Norris Cathedral.
Now, I wasn't a young friend,but my friend Crispin was, and
he dragged me along and said,come on, we're a bit short.

(26:35):
Come and say hello to the Prime Minister.
So there I was on a Saturdaymorning at the end of a very,
a lot, a line of teenagers.
Shaking hands with Callahan.
So he stopped and he looked, I rememberthis so vividly, and he looked at me and
he went, so what are you going to do?
which the Senate, to which I said, as youwould at that age, I said, I'm thinking
you're gonna Oxford Prime Minister.

(26:56):
So Callahan looked at me and he lookedsuddenly wistful and crestfallen,
and he said to me, there are otherplaces, And then, went off down the
line and I thought, that's a bit odd.
And then five years later I readSusan Crosslands book, which contains
the account of Callahan sittingin cabinet with Crossland and all

(27:17):
the Oxford firsts who constitutedthe Wilson and Callahan cabinet.
And saying very, saying, I supposeyou all think that I'd, if I'd been
to Oxford, I'd have got a second.
And Crossland immensely.
Patronizingly says, no Jim, actually,you'd have probably got a first.
'cause you do actually havethis ability to separate.
Obviously I was collateral in a warthat I didn't know was being fought.

(27:40):
And that was why Callahan said tome, there are other places, and
carried on down the line becausethey, and again, he has supposed,
when he arrived at 10 Downing Streetin, this is not in his memoir.
I think it might, I think it's in his,might be in Bernard o' Donahue's book.
But, when he arrives at 10 Downing Street,he sits down at his desk and turned
to his aide and said, there are manycleverer people than me at the Labour

(28:02):
Party, but I am here and they are there.
Thought,

Helen (28:05):
wow, this is a bit, so yeah.
Incredible level, likedefensiveness coming in.
Personal myth.
Can I ask, and maybe this is aquestion for both of you, but maybe
Adam more, which is, what is thebitchiest of the seventies memoirs?
Because there is a period ofAn exquisite period of beef

Adam (28:18):
Glimmers of Twilight.
Joe Haynes 2003.
It's his.
At least his second volumeof, of biography about
working with Harold Wilson.
But it's the one where he reallydecide, possibly not every
se he was Press Secretary.
Yeah, And part of that, in a cabinetalong with Bernard Donahue you
mentioned, and Marcia Falconer,Marcia Williams, sorry, lady Falconer.
and, the big revelation in two th the2003, but which he hadn't talked to

(28:39):
mention up until that point was therewas actually a murder plot at some point.
Darl Wilson's personal position,Joe Stone proposed doing away
with his political secretary.
Let's knock her off.
That's right.
And he could make it looklike an overdose, which is
just quite extraordinary.
And, he still had it.
So again, it was Joe Haynes, who isabout 5,000 years old now, who popped

(28:59):
up quite recently still, again, withthe story about, Harold Wilson was
having an affair with, with, anotherone, another member of his staff.

DJ Taylor (29:06):
There's a Harold Wilson rehabilitation going on.
At the moment.
Yes.
And he, there's a stares context for this.
And Wilson, of course, he was deridedin the years after he had been Prime
Minister, but I can just see there, thereare moves afoot to rehabilitate here.
Can I also

Adam (29:19):
just say, just for listeners reading us who may be thinking of, reading up on
this stuff, do not read Marcia Williams.
Lady Falcon does own biography of hertime in down street, which is even
called Downing Street in perspective,which tells you everything about
how boring a Mandy it's going to be.
It almost

Helen (29:34):
actually Smells of od you know, O de par, doesn't it?
It's, but it's a very delicatelittle book, it's very weirdly,
thankfully very short Unlike someof the memoirs from that period.
One could mention,

Andy (29:45):
here's, a thing.
who knows?
Some of our listeners might bepeople who were MPS until recently.
Some of those people may be writingbooks even now about the last 14 years.
What advice would you give tosomeone who's trying to put together
a cracking political memoir?
Put

Adam (30:01):
the dirty bits in.
That's what we want is the gossip.
that's what we come away from this.
what you want is the personalities,the fallings out and the bitchiness.
Now

Andy (30:10):
doesn't that contradict what DJ was saying about the
celebr ratification of the memoir?
is there any way wecan reclaim the height?
Of, you only found my advice,

DJ Taylor (30:19):
my advice to anybody sitting down with this environment
be don't let on what you are doing.
Never give the faintest indication thatyou are taking notes that you have any
interest in this kind of thing at all.
Because it's the,
it's the outside.
It's the complete unknown.
It's the unthought of candidate,I think sometimes who produces
the best kind of book.

Helen (30:37):
I think you have to decide whether or not you're trying to write an apology
for your life and perspective, right?
Or if you're trying to write an actuallyobjective, interesting, honest book.
'cause there is a value in both of them.
I think that what DJ was sayingabout the kind of personal
mythmaking is really true.
I do want to understand whatwas in Tony Blair's mind as the
war of over Iraq approached.
That's fundamentally quite interesting.

(30:59):
It's not the same as getting a kindof much more objective assessment.
So I think what I've learned is you maybedo a mix of reading, memoir and biography
because you will, it is interestingto see inside a person's head, but
it also inevitably is quite limited.
Have you got a pick, Andy?

Andy (31:15):
Nadine Dories is the plot of course, obviously that is,

Helen (31:19):
oh, I have such a great book in so many ways.
Just the way that it's basicallyNadine series of coffees in five
Hartford Street I hear, and she putsin every single time I switch the
Otter transcription app on in my phone.
Such it's a really unnecessary level ofdetail about all the journalism that she
did in this kind of really excited way.

Andy (31:35):
I know, I just, that's not my, that's not my pick, obviously.
It's, it's, breaking thecode by Charles Brandeth.
Who was before he was Mr.
Cuddly jumpers and teddies.
He was an MP for Chester, between 1992and 1997 before which he was also Mr.
Cuddly jumpers and teddies on morning tv.

(31:55):
So it's a very bizarre, briefpolitical career that he had.
This,

Adam (31:59):
this kind of hits both our marks, doesn't it?
'cause it's that sort ofinsider outsider review.
And if I know anything aboutDAR Grant, it's gonna be very
gossipy and name dropping.
Exactly.

Andy (32:06):
It's a really good book.
it's very, it's big, but it's a, it's.
it's off-putting big, but actually ifyou wanna book about the collapse of the
nineties, major government It gets itbecause he doesn't have anything to lose.
Firstly, he knows he'sgonna lose his suit.
Yes.
That's it.
so you really want someone who'sgot no further ambition at the
point they're writing this.
it's in diary format.

(32:28):
It's in, real time.
so he and I think he said afterwards, oneof the keys is to write it on the day.
'cause otherwise you starttidying and you start improving.
You think, oh, just sandthat off on all of this.
If you write it on theday, you really do get it.
and it's during thisphenomenally unsuccessful time.
And that's always more interesting toread than the years where everything's
going magnificently and you are just.

(32:49):
getting on with it, but it's, it's thetime of David Miller and, Steven Shagger
Norris and his five mistresses and all ofit's a time of, every, page practic base.
We're

Helen (33:00):
so based, so that's all we want to read about, basically
is just down street shagging.
It's terrible.
It's,

Andy (33:05):
a really interesting time of every page is another disaster
and he's reacting to it, saying.
What Steve Norris and it's, it is, soyou're getting a proper, fresh, emotional
reaction from him, which is interesting,

Helen (33:18):
But I would defend that because I think the, thing about politics is that
it's a bit like the way that, economicsin the 20th century had belief that
everybody acted rationally and you couldwork out systems, and then they went,
oh, actually, most of the time peopleare acting in very irrational ways.
Politics is immersive by that, which is.
That you e everything wouldgo well if only people didn't
keep doing stupid things.
And so it's really interesting to find outall the ways, all the human fallibilities,

(33:40):
yes, like you say, it is just the personwho's had an affair with their secretary
that then tanks an incredibly importantpolicy or they don't get to talk about
it because you know some, someoneassaulted a goose on a highway and that's
dominates in news agenda for a week.
That's why I think these things are.
A brilliant 'cause they talk aboutthe way the best laid plans end up
crumbling in the face of just weirdand stupid things that humans do.

Andy (34:00):
Yeah.
And, justification for the book beinginteresting in a political way, apart from
all the gossip, is that Brandreth was, inthe Whipps office and the Whipps office,
the ways of the whips were very secretive,for almost the entire 20th century.
it wasn't, it was notreally a known thing.
And he's, that's why the book iscalled Breaking the Code, it's also
really rude about lots of people.

(34:21):
In a way that you probably wouldn'tpublish today about people's
looks and things like that.
It's quite.
I've reread a few bits of went,oh, that is old style offensive.
That is genuinely really rudeabout Harriet Harman or whatever.
And yeah.
Yeah, I think, and that's

Helen (34:35):
quite useful in a way because it also does tell you
what the actual untied up way thatpeople were talking about stuff.
And like in reflection, I wroteProfile of Harriet Harman a couple
years ago, and if you go back to theclippings about her, they are just.
So unbelievably offensive.
she's shrill, she's whiny.
She's obsessive, and you've justbegin to, this organ used to call

DJ Taylor (34:53):
her Hattie Har person.

Helen (34:56):
yeah.
Back in that day.
There's a lot and about how shewas, women's rights obsessive, but
you'd get to then like by revisitingunvarnished versions of the past, rather
than what everyone would like to saythat they were doing, you go, okay.
Yeah.
the homophobia of the seventies,the incredible sexism that
Harmon faced, you actually getto confront that kind of head on.
Yeah.

Andy (35:14):
Okay.
So as you, the listener, head off to yourdesert island or wherever you're going.
You can take with you these four books.
Charles Brown, just Breaking the Code.
Susan

Adam (35:23):
Crosslands Life of Tony Crossland, Chris Mullins of you from the Foothills,

Helen (35:27):
Nancy Mitford, the Sun King,

Adam (35:29):
and you're definitely gonna be over your baggage allowance.

Andy (35:33):
So that's it for this summer book Special.
Hope you've enjoyed it.
We'll be back with more topicalmaterial in a fortnight's time.
Who knows what it'll be about.
Find out then.
Until then, go and buy the magazineor [e-mail].
Thanks to Adam Helen and DJ and to theproducer Matt Hill of Aret and Cordio.

(35:54):
And to you for listening.
Bye for now.