In an interview on British Politics

Tell me about your book selections.

I have spent most of my adult life in or hanging around British politics, so perhaps it is natural to start with the two books that, to me, best reflect what political life is like. Both, it is true, are from a few years back. They thus perhaps understate one of the dominant factors of modern politics – the ubiquitous power of the media – and overstate the importance of Westminster life. But great books contain eternal truths as well as transient ones and both pass that test. Tony Crosland, a portrait of my former boss by his wife Susan Crosland, was hugely acclaimed when it came out, and as the modern generation stumbles across it, it acclaims once more.

For this blends the personal side of politics with the policy. Susan Crosland was the first and amongst the best of the modern school of profile writers, and what this lacks in objectivity it gains in sheer acuity of observation. Tony Crosland (protégé of Hugh Gaitskell, Labour politician and author between 1950 and his death in 1977) is perhaps too much of a personality to prosper in the anally-retentive political world of today, where to give free expression to one’s character is to bleed in front of the sharks. Still, a few manage to be both politicians and themselves even today – Peter Mandelson springs to mind. And this book might encourage more to do the same.