Throwing light on the corridors of power: the art of political memoirs

Nicola Sturgeon to release 'deeply personal and revealing' memoir

Pan Macmillan also said that she would cover “all the important events and debates of her time, including the establishment of the Scottish Parliament, the SNP’s election to government, the Scottish independence referendum, Brexit, Covid and much more".

Political rivals such as Lib Dem MSP Willie Rennie and Scottish Conservative chairman Craig Hoy are among those who have greeted news of the memoirs with derision. But the book should be an interesting and topical read, given all that happened during Ms Sturgeon's reign as FM. A bookish figure, she has, her publisher says, already written extracts that are "notable for their wit, honesty and excellent writing". 

Many politicians have, following their time in office, published memoirs, sometimes in the form of meticulously-kept diaries of their daily activities and observations. Leaders tend to write books in order to explain what they did, and why, and to preserve what they see as their legacy. More than a few scores are settled along the way, of course. And not every memoir justifies its publisher's outlay.

Here we look at just a few high-profile British political memoirs.

Tony Blair attends his book signing at an Eason bookstore in Dublin with Eason's Managing Director, Conor Whelen, on September 4, 2010 (Image: Niall Carson - WPA Pool/Getty Images)

Tony Blair's A Journey (2010) saw the pioneering former Labour PM discussing in candid terms his career, the ambitious formation of New Labour, and his years in Downing Street, covering such landmark issues as the rise of New Labour, the Iraq War, and the Good Friday Agreement. As befits a politician who was so controversial, if not polarising, reviews were mixed.

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One of the most subtle reviews was by the Observer's Andrew Rawnsley, who said: "I finished his autobiography still thinking of Tony Blair as a kaleidoscope. He can be charmingly self-deprecating one moment, and repellently vain the next. Banalities tumble across these pages, but there are also thoughtful and significant meditations about modern politics.

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"This autobiography, like its author, has many faces: important and infuriating, trite and profound, cynical but also optimistic, world-weary and yet often quite naive, racked with anxieties about some things and evangelical in his certitudes about others, intellectually lazy and confused about many issues but more often than not utterly clear-sighted when it comes to the big ones".

Protesters clash with police outside the Eason bookstore in Dublin. Anti-war protesters threw shoes and eggs as Blair arrived at the store (Image: Phillip Massey/Getty Images)

Other notable books written by leading figures in New Labour include Gordon Brown's comprehensive My Life, My Times (2017) and Peter Mandelson's The Third Man: Life at the Heart of New Labour (2010). As its title suggests, Peter Watt's Inside Out: My Story of Betrayal and Cowardice at the Heart of New Labour (2010) is a much more jaundiced account of those years.

David Cameron's For the Record (2019) addressed, at some length, his decision to hold a referendum on Britain's EU membership in 2016. Many critics understandably saw the book through the prism of the damage caused by Brexit.

David Cameron published his memoirs in 2019, while Boris Johnston is reportedly working on his own memoirs (Image: Yui Mok/PA)

Andrew Moravcsik, reviewing the book in the Foreign Affairs journal, wrote perceptively: "Politics is an ugly game, and few who play it are self-reflective. So memoirs by leading politicians almost always disappoint.

David Cameron's memoirs were published in 2019 (Image: PR)

"Even when they avoid outright lies, most mislead by omission, revealing little backroom maneuvering and evading personal responsibility for errors. This book is no exception: the former British prime minister, aware that history will remember him primarily for his disastrous choice to hold the ill-fated Brexit referendum, offers a retrospective self-justification".

Cameron, he concluded, "comes across as a sincere and decent fellow severely lacking in the Machiavellian foresight, ruthlessness, and savvy required for political success".

Coalition: The Inside Story of the Conservative-Liberal Democrat Coalition Government (2016), by the LibDem MP David Laws, who helped negotiate the complex arrangement between the two parties, is full of intriguing, fly-on-the-wall arguments between Cameron, Nick Clegg and George Osborne. Laws, one reviewer marvelled, "sometimes appears to have been lying under his leader's bed, like a loyal pet".

One of Cameron's successors, Boris Johnston, was said last January to be working on his memoirs for publisher HarperCollins. It will be a “prime ministerial memoir like no other”, said Arabella Pike, publishing director at William Collins, an imprint of HarperCollins UK.

Love her or loathe her, Margaret Thatcher's The Downing Street Years (1993) was a compelling account of her time in office between 1979 and 1990: the three election victories, the miners' strike, the Falklands war, and the wholesale transformation of the British economy.

Roy Jenkins's review of The Downing Street Years

Roy Jenkins wrote of the book in The Observer: "We are constantly asked to accept the unspoken premiss that the net result of her 11-and-a-half-year stewardship was a British miracle. If we do, then the story is persuasively told; and in any event lucidly so. Despite the excessive ballyhoo of its launch, The Downing Street Years is entitled to a high place amongst the over-long, self-justificating, politics-obsessed memoirs of the recent past".

Geoffrey Howe's Conflict of Loyalty (1994) was a substantial insider account of the way the Thatcher adminstration finally ran off the rails. It was Howe's resignation speech that helped to hasten the downfall of Mrs Thatcher.

Notable books by Scottish politicians include Blood on the Walls: Memoirs of an Anti-Royalist (1992), Dennis Canavan's Let the People Decide (2009), Tam Dalyell's The Importance of Being Awkward (2011), Jim Sillars's A Difference of Opinion: My Political Journey (2021) and Alex Salmond's The Dream Shall Never Die (2015), which was written in the aftermath of the 2014 indyref.

Alistair Darling's Back from the Brink: 1,000 Days at Westminster (2011) is a compelling account of how he, as Chancellor, and the Labour government of Gordon Brown confronted the run on Northern Rock and the global financial crisis of 2007-2008. It's especially good on his relationships with Brown and Sir Mervyn King, governor of the Bank of England.

Alistair Darling with Gordon Brown, Clydebank town hall, September 2014 (Image: PA)

Many of the best political books have come in diary form: Harold Macmillan's quite riveting The Macmillan Diaries 1950-1957 and 1957-1966; Barbara Castle's The Castle Diaries 1974-76; Richard Crossman's The Crossman Diaries, the Journals of Woodrow Wyatt, Alan Clark's indiscreet diaries, and the diaries of Henry 'Chips' Channon.

Barbara Castle at a press conference given by anti-Common Market Ministers in 1975, accompanied by Michael Foot, Tony Benn and Peter Shore (Image: PA)

The four volumes of diaries by Alistair Campbell covering the Blair years - Prelude to Power, Power and the People, Power & Responsibility, and The Burden of Power - are outstanding and full of candid insight. Sasha Swire's gossipy Diary of an MP's Wife caused, for understandable reasons, something a stir in Tory circles.

Chris Mullin's volumes of diaries, covering his time as a New Labour minister and afterwards, are among the most engaging written by a modern politician.

Chris Mullin (Image: Newsquest)

"Almost without exception", Mullin writes in the introduction to the second volume, Decline & Fall, "the most successful political diarists are people who have occupied the lower foothills. Perhaps because they have had time to look around and observe details that those who dwell in the stratosphere often fail to notice. And also because, not being significant players, we the humble inhabitants of the foothills do not have to waste time on self-justification. I like to think I am in this category, though that is for others to judge".