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'Charles Dickens's Steerforth meets Enid Blyton's Julian half way -- about 1910 -- and the product bears an uncanny resemblance to someone we all know. Columnists may rage and psychobiographers babble, but in one neat, beguiling and funny little satire, John Morrison has said it all.' -- Matthew Parris
Jonathan Sale in The Independent:
Morrison doesn't just go for the obvious gags...(His) task was to keep the pastiche in motion for a 250-page book that worked as a story as well as a political joke...He has pulled it off. Book collectors of the future may, missing the politics, be fooled into thinking this is the real Edwardian thing. This is not Billy Bunter and it is not played totally for laughs. The mood becomes darker as the story progresses - just like the tale of the real Tony. It's a squib, but it goes off with a loud bang.
European Tribune:
It's wonderfully illustrated with Edwardian-style drawings by David Alan Hopkins, it's howlingly funny - with an underlying note of seriousness. And, by the time you've read Anthony Blair Captain of School, you'll have gained a little more insight into who the little chappie is.
Urban Fox, Times Online Correspondent:
Anthony Blair Captain of School tells a story of English public school life circa 1910. But it's a story that will be strangely familiar to every follower of the modern Westminster political scene. A page or two will be enough to have you swearing you can hear the yelped 'Yaroos!' emanating from Number 10 Downing Street. Get to the end and you'll know exactly what book our Prime Minister will be begging not to be given for Christmas.
Atticus in The Sunday Times:
John Morrison, author of the ripping yarn, will be visiting Brighton with a once-in-a-lifetime special offer. 'I'm offering ministers a free brown paper bag,' he said, 'so they can read the book without fear of losing their jobs.'
Pauline Reynolds in Sunday Life, Belfast:
Take a few blokes called Blair, Adams and McGuinness, a handful of missing rifles and a toast to the 'Republican Brotherhood'. Combine this with a rendition of the Wearing of the Green and a visit to Ma Mowlam's dodgy boathouse, and you begin to feel the sense of a new book about to be published.
The Independent on Sunday:
The Prime Minister and his chums have fallen victim to a merciless new satire that transports him from the comfy sofas of Downing Street to the gloomy corridors of an Edwardian boarding institution.
Guardian Unlimited's Political Correspondent Matthew Tempest:
A new book from the former Reuters' Westminster bureau chief John Morrison stands out for variety, if nothing else: a novel, reimagining Blair and his Cabinet cohorts as Edwardian schoolboys.
The New Statesman's columnist Kevin Maguire:
Conmen, topless models, Aztec rebirthing pyramids and missing weapons of mass destruction have raised the bar for satirists, but that old Reuters hand John Morrison has a jolly good go in Anthony Blair Captain of School.
On his very first day he makes the acquaintance of his study companion, a Scottish lad named Brown.
"His new study companion had plunged his nose into a book, and was writing furiously. He seemed much older than his years.
'The mater's done us proud,' Blair said as he pushed a slice of cake across the desk. The dark-haired boy put down his pen and took the cake with his inky fingers.
'It's not bad.'
Blair detected a Scottish accent. 'I'm sort of Scottish too,' he said. 'How ripping that we should be sharing a study. Do help yourself.'
'You don't sound Scottish,' Brown replied. 'You could be a Sassenach impostor.' For the first time, Blair could detect the hint of a wintry smile. Perhaps he and the dour Scottish boy would be chums after all."
I'll leave it to you to guess what wonderful chums Blair and Brown become. Or how they get on with school pals Mandelson, Murdoch, and Campbell, with religious-maniac headmaster Dr Bush, with ice-cream and jam-puff salesman Berlusconi, or with the town grocer's daughter who, working in the Thatcher family shop,
"sat in a mahogany booth, operating a giant American cash register of polished brass."
Suffice it to say that the plot thickens as rifles go missing (sort of) and Captain of School Blair leads (sort of) the assault on Fat Sam's lair, the Saracen's Head in Mesopotamia, the dicey part of the local town...
David Alan Hopkins' Edwardian-style illustrations are just right, and author John Morrison has the manner of the English boarding-school story of yesteryear down to a T. The book is howlingly funny, and -- like the best parody -- has an underlying note of seriousness. Because our young hero's fibs and caddishness have consequences (none that he notices, you'll be relieved to learn), when things at the Saracen's Head (as in the real-life Mesopotamia) get nasty.
By the time I'd read "Anthony Blair, Captain of School", I was surprised to find I'd gained a new perspective on the shallows, and the depths, of Westminster politics.
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