- Speaking for Myself by Cherie Blair
- Prezza, My Story by John Prescott with Hunter Davies
- A Question of Honour by Michael Levy
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New Labour’s exes are a hard-publishing lot. So far we have had diaries from two of its central figures, David Blunkett and Alastair Campbell, and from a spin-doctor hanger-on (Lance Price); a memoir by its most senior diplomat, the former ambassador to Washington Sir Christopher Meyer; and now memoirs by the former prime minister’s wife, his deputy and his bagman. The granddaddy of them all, Blair’s own memoirs, are still to come. It is an unprecedented cascade of memoirs by prominent figures in a government which is, let’s not forget, still in power. The phenomenon seemed odd when it began – Lance Price was called in front of a Parliamentary committee in December 2005 to account for his temerity in publishing his insider’s account. By now we’re used to it, and it’s getting to the point where it would be more surprising for a New Labour ins
ider not
to publish a book explaining how he/she was both a. more at the centre of things than anybody had hitherto suspected while also b. not to blame for any of the stuff that went wrong. Read more
- Netherland by Joseph O’Neill
‘Netherland’ is an ambiguous word. It evokes, of course, the Netherlands inhabited by the Dutch, one of whom, Hans van den Broek, tells this story of a few late years spent in that New World city founded almost four hundred years ago on Manhattan Island as New Amsterdam, in what was then the territory of New Netherland. But ‘netherland’ cou
ld also
mean any faraway place, as in those ‘nether regions’ of the city where Hans’s teammates from the Staten Island Cricket Club spend their nights. (Hans spends his nights in Chelsea, a Manhattan neighbourhood hardly described in this book, notable for a high concentration of well-built gay men, new condominiums, art galleries, bank branches and large home-furnishing outlets.) ‘Netherland’ also has sinister overtones of Never Never Land, and sounds like a euphemism for Hades. Read more
‘Humanitarian intervention’ has little to show for its brief appearance on the international stage. It arrived too late for Rwanda, gestured helplessly at Bosnia and, at last, in 2003, it was discovered in the arms of Shock and Awe, where it died of shame. Only Kosovo Albanians, about 1.8 million people, still applaud the violent expulsion of Slobodan Milosevic from their province in 1999. However they are less sure about the legacy of intervention and the advantages of being a United Nations protectorate. Read more
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