- 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.
- 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.
‘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.
Also
in this issue
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