Events, Dear Boy, Events: A Political Diary of Britain from Woolf to Campbell by Ruth Winstone (editor)
| Events, Dear Boy, Events: A Political Diary of Britain from Woolf to Campbell by Ruth Winstone (editor) | |
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| Category: Politics and Society | |
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Reviewer: John Van der Kiste
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| Summary: An anthology packed with excerpts from diarists, including politicians, authors and showbiz personalities, covering various movements in politics and major national and international events from the last hundred years, which can be dipped into or read cover-to-cover. In effect it is in some ways like an alternative history of our times. | |
| Buy? Yes | Borrow? Yes |
| Pages: 680 | Date: October 2012 |
| Publisher: Profile | |
| ISBN: 9781846684326 | |
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Choosing an anthology of this nature is bound to be something of a random, scattershot operation. Of the thousands of diarists who have left their written observations and commentaries of political events in, or affecting, the United Kingdom in the last hundred years or so, many are bound to be omitted, and an editor has a thankless task of choosing the best. However Ruth Winstone, a former Senior Clerk at the House of Commons and editor of published diaries by Tony Benn and Chris Mullin, has compiled an impressive volume bringing together extracts from politicians and other celebrities covering all shades of opinion and all major happenings.
Given Ms Winstone’s background, it is not surprising that of all the personalities whose words enliven these pages, the name of the indefatigable Tony Benn looms the largest throughout. We meet him first in the Second World War as a schoolboy commenting on an invasion exercise. From then onwards we have his thoughts on Europe (or the ‘Common Market’ issue, as it was spoken of for so many years), the problems of Ulster, GM crops, the strike at Grunwick, the fence at Greenham Common, the extravagance and decadence of a dance at the American embassy, Aneurin Bevan as ‘completely anti-professional’ because of his hostility to broadcasting on TV, and indeed fright of the media, in 1957, and Tony Blair as ‘a disaster’ on the grounds that Britain simply did not have a foreign policy with reference to the bombing of Lebanon in 2006.
Also regularly referenced is another maverick on the opposite side of the House of Commons, Alan Clark. While in the process of being selected as the Conservative candidate for the safest of the three seats in Plymouth in 1972, he muses on it being the most corrupt city in Britain, and a year later dismisses Blackpool where he had gone for the annual party conference as appalling, loathsome, with vulgar, common primitives drifting about in groups or standing on the Promenade. From an earlier age, Harold Nicolson discusses the thorny issue of whether King George V’s refusal to accept a Soviet ambassador at the beginning of Labour’s first period of office in government, on the grounds that the latter represented a nation which had sanctioned the wholesale butchering of several of his close relatives – ‘an obstinate and outspoken little man’. (Ironically, Nicolson was later commissioned to write the official biography of the sovereign’s political life.)
Also represented are the thoughts of postwar party leaders such as Harold Macmillan and Hugh Gaitskell, and a remark from Churchill’s private secretary Sir John Colville on how in 1952 Mrs Churchill did not think her husband would last long as Prime Minister. In fact, despite failing health he clung on for almost another two years. Gyles Brandreth, better known as an author and broadcaster before his single term at Westminster, spends an hour with William Hague as leader of the opposition and finds him likeable, clear-headed, articulate, thoughtful and shrewd, and in theatrical terms ‘a first-class leading man’, but not a star like Blair. Other politicians whose thoughts have been culled include Leo Amery, Barbara Castle, Paddy Ashdown, Edwina Currie, and Oona King.
The thoughts of those who were on the inner or outer circle of politics, and those who were simply observers as well, are sometimes equally telling. Early pioneering socialist Beatrice Webb laments the failure of the General Strike of 1926 and sees ‘a day of terrible disillusionment’ for the Trade Union Movement; Lord Mountbatten causes indignation during the early days of the reign of Elizabeth II, according to Colville, because he has let it be known that the House of Mountbatten now reigned (he was later put in his place and informed that it remained the House of Windsor); Roy Strong, Director of the Victoria and Albert Museum, bemoans the cuts in arts expenditure, the WC1 postal strike, the unavailability of sugar and salt, and the dire state of the Bakerloo and Circle underground lines in 1974 during the early weeks of Harold Wilson’s final term in office.
As an aside, there are occasional random thoughts on contemporary Culture. In 1960 Noel Coward lambasts Samuel Beckett’s ‘Waiting for Godot’ as pretentious gibberish, without any claim to importance whatsoever. Malcolm Muggeridge reminiscences about the day a year later when he dropped into a teenage rock’n’roll joint in Hamburg to see a little-known English band from Liverpool, who recognised him, bashing their instruments and emitting nerveless sounds into microphones. (Even Winstone finds it unnecessary to remind us who they were, though or perhaps because John Lennon is mentioned in a footnote on the same page). Michael Palin writes wistfully about how a small portion of our everyday language dies forever and is replaced with the advent of decimal currency in 1971, but he personally resents postal codes and all-figure telephone numbers in London far more. John Rae, then headmaster of Westminster School, pours scorn in 1975 on the idea that Britain should no longer pass on a mono-cultural tradition and the watering down of British history and literature to suit ethnic minorities.
There are 16 black and white plates, and an appendix containing brief notes about each diarist quoted.
In a review of this length, it is difficult to give little more than a flavour of such a book. It can be dipped into at random, though I personally read it from cover to cover and I found it thoroughly entertaining as well as informative as what might be called an alternative history of our age. One aspect which I found fascinating was that it began with events about which I first learned in my history lessons at school, and it gradually came to an end with those which I could easily recall hearing and reading about at the time.
If this book appeals then we think you'll also enjoy Pistols at Dawn: Two Hundred Years of Political Rivalry from Pitt and Fox to Blair and Brown by John Campbell. If you would like to be amused, have a look at Future King by Larry Pontius.
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You can read more book reviews or buy Events, Dear Boy, Events: A Political Diary of Britain from Woolf to Campbell by Ruth Winstone (editor) at Amazon.co.uk Amazon currently charges £2.99 for standard delivery for orders under £20, over which delivery is free.
You can read more book reviews or buy Events, Dear Boy, Events: A Political Diary of Britain from Woolf to Campbell by Ruth Winstone (editor) at Amazon.com.
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