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Book Reviews

• Mary Beard: 'The best thing about the Blair book was the stuff about boozing' September 4, 2010
  The professor of classics at the University of Cambridge gives her verdict on Tony Blair's memoirThe best thing about the Blair book was the stuff about boozing. I had always imagined that New Labour was a "Perrier-and-rocket-salad" party, and that they dispelled the stress of government with 30 minutes on the treadmill. Here was Blair confess […]
• Tony Benn: 'What is really significant about Tony Blair was that he set up a new political party, New Labour' September 4, 2010
  The veteran Labour politician and president of the Stop the War Coalition gives his verdict on Tony Blair's memoirA Journey tells the story of Tony Blair's remarkable career – 10 years at No 10. Like any memoir, it highlights the story and illustrates it with comments about some of the people with whom he worked. But what is really significant abou […]
• Justin Cartwright: 'Blair makes it clear that he found Brown dull and slow' September 4, 2010
  The novelist gives his verdict on Tony Blair's memoirTony Blair's account of his political life is apparently the fastest selling book Waterstone's has ever had. This may in part be because it is the only multiple bookshop still standing, and because it is discounting it heavily, but still, in an era when political memoirs are often leaden sel […]
• Richard Eyre: 'Blair had a very considerable skill as a performer' September 4, 2010
  The film and theatre director gives his verdict on Tony Blair's memoirWhen I talked to the sixth form at Fettes college in 1970 about The Crucible, I was unaware that a future prime minister was in the class. Tony Blair and his classmates had been to see my production of the play and many years later he told me that the play had woken him up to the late […]
• Christopher Hitchens: 'The righteous will evidently never tire of the pelting and taunting of Tony Blair' September 4, 2010
  The author and journalist gives his verdict on Tony Blair's memoirThe righteous will evidently never tire of the pelting and taunting of Tony Blair, and perhaps those like him who choose to join the Roman choir of extreme unctuousness must expect their meed of abuse. But I cannot forget the figures of Slobodan Milošević, Charles Taylor and Saddam Hussei […]
• Michael Howard: 'Tony Blair was a brilliant politician. But, ultimately, he was a failed prime minister' September 4, 2010
  The former Leader of the Conservative Party gives his verdict on Tony Blair's memoirMuch has been written about the apparent candour of Tony Blair's memoir. He even concedes that on occasion he stretched the truth past breaking point. And he asserts that "politicians are obliged from time to time to conceal the full truth, to bend it and even […]
• Fiona Millar: 'His perceptions about people and acute eye for the comic make it a good read' September 4, 2010
  The journalist and partner of Alastair Campbell gives her verdict on Tony Blair's memoirIn spite of my mixed relationship with the Blairs over the years, I prefer to think the best of them: their combined warmth, his humour, energy, determination, her formidable intelligence and feistiness. The book justifies those instincts. His perceptions about peopl […]
• Andrew O'Hagan: 'Blair is cursed with a strong sense of his own decency' September 4, 2010
  The novelist gives his verdict on Tony Blair's memoirThe Lord God so liked his little Tony that he placed him on Earth to show humanity how it should never trust a man who thinks his goodness is axiomatic. That's where the story begins and ends, but not for Tony, who mistook his mission, believing that loyalty to one's good intentions means th […]
• Clare Short: 'I was surprised by how messianic and hubristic it is right from the start. Early on, Blair was not like this' September 4, 2010
  The former Secretary of State for International Development gives her verdict on Tony Blair's memoirI was not intending to read the book, any more than those of Alastair Campbell or Peter Mandelson, but I was sent a copy for comment and curiosity got the better of me.I was surprised by how messianic and hubristic it is right from the start. Early on, Bl […]
• Peter Wilby: 'Anybody who studies Blair is forced to the conclusion that what is really at the core of him is Christianity' September 4, 2010
  The New Statesman and Guardian writer gives his verdict on Tony Blair's memoirTony Blair was always the most mysterious of Britain's prime ministers, largely because, before he became Labour leader, he had never, unless you count assistant secretary of a Labour party branch, attained office of any kind, not even school prefect. None of his numerous […]
• Stryker McGuire: 'Americans have had a taste of Blair's feud with Gordon Brown, but they will be struck by Blair's venom' September 4, 2010
  The editor of LSE Research and contributing editor to Newsweek gives his verdict on Tony Blair's memoirThe image most Americans have of Tony Blair is in soft focus, to put it mildly. They see an attractive, articulate, sincere man who didn't think twice about standing shoulder-to-shoulder with the US after 9/11. If in the haze they make out anythin […]
• Tony Blair's A Journey: Andrew Rawnsley's review September 4, 2010
  The cliches and pop psychology will make you grimace, but Tony Blair's memoir is also remarkably candid – except when it comes to IraqIt is Tony Blair's boast that he wrote every word in longhand "on hundreds of notepads". That I believe. He was the most brilliant communicator of his era as a platform speaker or television interviewee, bu […]
• The Cry of the Sloth by Sam Savage | Book review September 4, 2010
  Sam Savage's follow-up to Firmin is an entertaining epistolary satire about a bitter small-time literary editorSam Savage's last novel, Firmin, was a cult success about a rat with human characteristics. Conversely, his follow-up concerns a human who bears striking similarities to a sloth. Andrew Whittaker – pompous miser and self-hating editor of t […]
• Mao's Great Famine by Frank Dikötter | Book review September 4, 2010
  The horrors of China's Great Leap Forward are unveiled in this masterly study of the hateful planFrank Dikötter has written a masterly book that should be read not just by anybody interested in modern Chinese history but also by anybody concerned with the way in which a simple idea propagated by an autocratic national leader can lead a country to disast […]
• Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad, David Zane Mairowitz and Catherine Anyango | Book review September 4, 2010
  The intensity of Conrad's epic tale of madness is brought to life in graphic detailMy huge enthusiasm for the graphic novels I write about here is going to make reviewing Self Made Hero's latest Eye Classic, an adaptation of Joseph Conrad's 1902 novella, Heart of Darkness, somewhat tricky. Will I sound unhinged if I crank it up a little? Perha […]