John Major The Autobiography (Hardcover)

So we find him bowed down by the misfortunes of an ungrateful world, rendered defensive by problems with the economy, by arguments over Europe, by the intractability of politicians in Northern Ireland, by attacks from within his own party.

With that same party busy airbrushing him from its history--despite his unlikely victory over Neil Kinnock in 1992--it's as well he has got his account into print, an unstuffy telling of a fascinating story that is free of the pomposity that affects so many of his political peers and which reveals a deep-seated belief in the value of basic decency. "I will not concede possession of the recent past to the mythographers of left or right who have every self-interest in retouching the history we made," he says.

But how sad to find him still so defensive and so bitter about the slights of others, still anxious to explain why speeches or gestures were misconstrued. "I was too conservative, too conventional. Too safe, too often. Too defensive. Too reactive," he says. But could he have been anything else? --Kim Fletcher

Review
Who would have thought it? A Prime Minister who, in office, was noted for neither his command of the language nor his introspection has written one of the best political autobiographies of the decade and, as a result, has won admiring readers from the ranks of men and women who would never have considered voting for him. The secret of John Major's unexpected success is simplicity. He has written a straightforward, and sometimes painfully honest, description of a life which was obviously racked with self doubt. To have been Prime Minister of Great Britain and the United Kingdom - and to have gained power in his own right by winning a general election - is a great achievement and usually a case for rejoicing. For John Major it was a great tribulation. And because he admits it he excites our sympathy as well as astonishment that success can be such a burden. All political memoirs have as their secret sub-title Vindicated at Last. And John Major's autobiography is no exception to that self-justifying rule. Norman Lamont's account of the EMS crisis is corrected and his conduct, when told he must leave the Treasury, described in chilling detail. The behaviour of Margaret Thatcher, when Redwood challenged Major for the Tory Party leadership, is properly identified as disloyal. But the whole book is written with such transparent honesty that the reader automatically accepts Major's interpretation of events. After all, a man who can write with such lack of inhibition about the peculiarity of his upbringing and the peccadilloes of his family is not likely to invent stories of colleagues' petulance. In fact there is so much painful truth in Major's autobiography that it must appeal to the political voyeur. But it is also essential reading for anyone who aspires to understand the politics of the 1990s. Review by Roy Hattersley, former Deputy Leader of the Opposition (Kirkus UK)

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