Alan Clark: The Biography [Paperback]

As yet another fan of AC who has waited years for the official biography, I too am enormously disappointed by this 'official' biography. The author's prose style is Ford Prefect compared to his subject's Lagonda. Where is the flair and the scandal which AC would surely have expected to see in his biograpy? AC was never dull and its outrageous that this book is just that. AC's life had so many contradictions, especially in his private life, and the book fails to explore anything in any depth. He adored Jane yet felt compelled to court other women. He adored Margaret Thatcher yet deliberately antagonized her with his mammal protection bill and his hypocrisy in wearing leather shoes. Endless interesting material for a good biographer... one day.

I am sad to say I don't agree with the critical praise heaped on this biography. I was a huge fan of all 3 volumes of the diaries and eagerly awaited this book, buying it as soon as it appeared in hardback. One day there will be a brilliant biography of Alan Clark but I really don't feel this is it. Firstly the book is very unbalanced, you get over 100 pages recounting his early childhood - a quarter of the 420+ pages, the larger figure quoted above includes all the indexes etc - which would be fine if it was particularly revealing (as with Michael Crick's biography of Jeffrey Archer) but it is all rather dull and didn't help me to understand Clark any better. The sole revelation Trewin manages to come up with is he and father didn't really get on (which is pretty clear from the Diaries) and even this is lacking in any proper analysis as to how it affected AC in his later life. AC and his political career properly starts about page 300.
The real lack of analysis is my major gripe with this book. Contradictions, paradoxes and downright lies all emerge from AC's life but Trewin just doesn't seem brave enough to take them on. Nothing is properly scrutinised or really examined and on one occasion, he leaves a fundamental contradiction in AC's life (his alleged vegetarianism) to a passing comment in a footnote. A few small examples:
(1) AC later claimed to have hated Eton but on all accounts that Trewin has found seems to have enjoyed it at the time. Why claim otherwise later?
(2)AC claimed to be vegetarian but it is clear from the Diaries that he isn't. Why say this?
(3) AC clearly lied about the source of the 'Donkeys' quote - why did he do this and what does it say about his character that he would do such a thing? Everybody had heard of the quote. Why not just leave it unattributed?
(4) AC seems to have loved Jane passionately but he cheated on her compulsively. What drove him to do this? Compulsive cheating is often a sign of trying to make up for some form of inadequacy. is this true for AC?
(5) AC described Jane before their marriage as the "perfect little victim". What exactly did he mean by this? Was it just a poor taste joke?
(6) Would AC have really let the Matrix Churchill defendants go to prison? (it is interesting that Trewin doesn't cite or quote Geoffrey Robertson QC's book which has a whole chapter on the trial and the build up to cross-examining AC).
(7) Trewin describes Michael Howard MP as a close friend but ignores AC's expressed wish in the last volume of the Diaries that MH die suddenly so he could have his seat in Parliament! What does this say about AC?
There are surely some interesting answers to these questions but I am afraid you won't find them here. No one expects cast iron answers but to have some debate would be nice. I often feel that it is in people's contradictions that we really begin to understand their true character.
Some sections (especially the sections on the 'Coven' and Alison Young) are incredibly brief and unsatisfactory and read as if Trewin is writing with a libel lawyer (or Jane Clark) peering over his shoulder. The Coven section is very poorly handled and fails to explain the one factor that almost everybody would immediately want to ask. How on earth did he end up having an affair with a mother and both her daughters? Did they know about each other at the time? Was it consecutive affairs or concurrent? None of this is explained and by the end of this book I felt that I knew no more about this episode of AC's life than I did from reading the Diaries and glancing at the front page of the News of the World.
Towards the end Trewin quotes more and more sections of the Diaries verbatim (the Heron, being "drunk" at the dispatch box, Thatcher's fall, his Bill on the Fur Trade etc) but - as I can't see anybody reading this book who hasn't already read the Diaries - this seemed a bit lazy (and as usual, none of the verbatim quotes is subject to any real analysis, so you are just left to make your own mind up anyway). Towards the end Trewin actually discusses the creation of the published Diaries themselves (he was their editor) and in one gob-smacking moment casually drops in that AC wasn't above "retouching" his Diary entries with hindsight. This just passes by as if it is nothing, but given how much Trewin has quoted from them with little or no comment, this is surely a huge issue? How many entries? What sort of changes? Trewin was his editor, he could at least give us some examples of the sort of alterations so we can see how accurately we should regard the Diaries as a primary source.
I am sorry to be negative about this book. I really wanted to love it but I feel it is very flawed. I can't help feeling that its status as the 'official' biography has handicapped it. Even in the reviews and articles written at the time of publication, a lot of interesting stories came out (for example, AC's pretty obnoxious behaviour towards the Times journalist Minette Marin) all of which feel as if they should have been within the pages of this volume. I want to read the definitive biography. Will somebody else have a go?

It seems that this biography has had mixed reviews. I suspect that some of the more adverse reviews have had as much to do with Alan Clark's perceived personality - he was without doubt a philandering cad and, as some of us used to say, an absolute bounder - or with his preferences - wine and women with a heavy emphasis on the latter - and policies - some very 'right-wing,' some akin to supposed 'left-wing' causes. This is no way to judge a biography, though I readily admit that my personal prejudices have often had an effect on my liking - or otherwise - for a book.

Ion Trewin has had privileged access, not only to Jane Clark, Alan's loving widow, but also to hitherto unpublished papers and effects at Saltwood Castle. He has also interviewed many of Clark's contemporaries, some hostile, some friendly. Given that the Diaries are wonderful in themselves and given that privileged access to more 'stuff' than most biographers enjoy, has Trewin done a good job? Speaking for myself - also an attempting biographer - I cannot believe that anyone could have done a better one. This book is more thriller than biography and I couldn't put it down because I loved every page and wished very much that Clark himself had lived longer so that the book could have been longer. Clark's lingering end has been well-documented by the victim himself through the Diaries but Trewin has added moving material and sympathetic words that only a good biographer can. The whole well-illustrated work is a huge success.

I was present but once to hear Alan Clark speak. I thought then what many thought then: that here was an amusing but essentially lightweight 'toff.' How wrong could I and others have been. Ion Trewin has done his late friend and his late friend's wife a great service by illustrating that there was a very considerable intellect behind the amusing 'toff' facade. And, alongside the considerable intellect there was much of what I now so admire.

I admire Clark's willingness to contemplate what might have ensued from an accommodation with Germany in 1940 or 1941 (after the Battle of Britain). (Is it proven that Hitler was a worse monster than 'Uncle' Joe Stalin and might it have then been possible to preserve the British Empire? Who knows now?). I admire Clark's love of animals and his aversion to blood sports. I admire Clark's standing up for the "poor brave [Christian] Serbs" against the Blair/Cook backing for the KLA ("Those loathsome, verminous gypsies") in 1999. (Gosh, my prejudices are showing now!).

Though flawed (there but for the Grace of God go many of us), I believe that Alan Clark was a politician of the first rank because he was an historian of the first rank (how many of today's politicians have really studied history? Afghanistan is, perhaps, the answer to that rhetorical question) and that Ion Trewin has proved to be a biographer of the first rank, too. This is a five-star biography and my only criticism of it is that, at 429 pages plus extensive notes, bibliography, etc., it isn't long enough.