Michael Foot
Kenneth O. Morgan
The authorised (but not uncritical) life of one of the great parliamentarians and orators of our times, the former Labour Party leader, now in his nineties, who is also an eminent man of letters.
Read Time: ~9.3 hr
Life in the jungle
by Michael Heseltine (2000)
About this book
"Michael Heseltine has enjoyed one of the most colourful and creative careers of modern British politics. By bestowing two successive nicknames - first 'Tarzan' and then 'Hezza' - the public displayed its instinctive rapport with him. For thirty years, from his days as Minister of Aerospace in the early 1970s to his appointments as Deputy Prime Minister in the mid-1990s, he has consistently ranked as one of the best-known and most admired of public figures." "In this autobiography he tells the story not just of his political life but of his business career as well - of his earliest commercial days running first a boarding-house and then a hotel in Bayswater; of how in 1962, as a property developer, he was almost forced into bankruptcy; of the way, after a disastrous start, he patiently built up his magazine empire to the point where it is today, one of the largest private companies in the land." "The book offers a number of personal glimpses. He tells of how he nearly died of meningitis at the age of five, of his sensitivity to his relative failure at his public school, of his feeling of vindication in being elected President of the Oxford Union in 1954 and of the subsequent ordeal of being trained as a national serviceman with the Brigade Squad at Caterham. He also writes movingly of his pride and joy, the arboretum at his country estate in Oxfordshire that he began planting twenty years ago."--Jacket.
Setting / LocationLondon & UK
Story EraModern Era
Protagonist / CoreLife in the jungle Lead Character
Readers who enjoyed this also loved
You can't say that
Ken Livingstone
" ... Whether describing his difficult childhood in working-class South LKondon, his love of nature or his battles with Margaret Thatcher and Gordon Brown, Ken Livingstone is never less than fascinating. His stories of deals and intrigues in committee rooms and council chambers are eye-opening and he is frank about his relationships with party bosses whose instinct was often to run a mile from him. [This book] is also revelatory about how things get done in big cities: Livingstone has been a great reforming city [of London] leader, whose achievements range from the introduction of the congestion charge and related environmental policies to major changes in the integration of London's transport networks. His campaigns against racism and homophobia and for women's rights made him a hate figure in the 1980s, but much of what he was arguing then is now the common sense of all decent politicians. And he played a central role in bringing the [2012] Olympics to London. ..."--Book jacket.
The patrician tribune
W. Jeffrey Tatum
Publius Clodius Pulcher was a prominent political figure during the last years of the Roman Republic. The first modern, comprehensive biography of Clodius, The Patrician Tribune traces his career from its earliest stages until its end in 52 B.C., when he was murdered by a political rival. Arguing that Clodius's story is crucial to our understanding of Roman constitutional, religious, and social history, Jeffrey Tatum explores Clodius's political successes, as well as the limitations of his popular strategies, within the broader context of Roman political practices. In the process, Tatum illuminates the relationship between the political contests of Rome's elite and the daily struggles of Rome's urban poor.
The progressive dilemma
David Marquand
David Marquand's account of how the Labour Party made itself electable and why it remained in the wilderness for so many years now has a new introduction and controversial new chapters on Neil Kinnock and Tony Blair.