Very pleasing display of my new book in the Parliamentary Bookshop.
The charming lady who runs the shop told me that sales are going well. I have to qualify my shameless promotion of the book by repeating that all royalties go to charities. There was a good reception from fellow parliamentarians today. A lady LibDem peer sent some flattering words - underlined twice. The brightest new LibDem MP liked the writing. A Labour MP complained that there was no index and he was forced to read the book to find his name. Exactly. One MP told me he had just started reading his copy - which he has borrowed from the Common Library. He is a Tory of course. The only hostility is from those who cannot disentangle newspaper headlines from the contents of the book.
2,000 words from the book were printed in one national newspaper: 1,000 words in another. One was distorted, malicious and mendacious. The other was truthful, intelligent and a tad inspirational. The two papers were the Mail and the Morning Star. I'll let you guess which is which.
Tomorrow I have an interview about the book for the Parliamentary Channel, another for Wedi Saith next week plus several radio interviews. These are very stimulating.
So far : so good.
Outside in.
Peter Hain's autobiography is a joy.
He has had a remakably full life that he has lived courageously. I have been among his critics. I attacked him as a Blair acolyte in 'Dragons led by Poodles.' I stand by those criticisms. He had to make many compromises to remain an influential minister. He explains in his book how he agonised about his Iraq war vote.
There is no questioning his courage in the anti-apartheid campaign, facing down fascist thugs and fighting his way out of a BOSS conspiracy to imprison him. He was an icon to me in 1969. It was his influence that persuaded me to concentrate on politics instead of the trade union work that I was absorbed with in 1969.
This is a great revealing read and an honest account of the testing contradictions of political life.
Comments