What the critics thought of Broken Vows: Tony Blair – The Tragedy of Power by Tom Bower,History’s People: Personalities and the Past by Margaret MacMillan and This Census-Taker by China Miéville“Tom Bower is to biography what Cruella de Vil was to dalmatians,” declared Craig Brown in the Mail on Sunday. “Once you are his subject, or you are also his victim.” The editorial line of Broken Vows: Tony Blair – The Tragedy of Power can be inferred from its title; most critics agreed that the biographer of such international bogeymen as Robert Maxwell,Conrad Black and Klaus Barbie had produced not the “full story of Blair’s decade in power that the book jacket promised but a vicious hatchet job. “Any student of journalistic hyperbole will welcome Broken Vows as a textbook,” wrote Brown. Bias is pervasive, or the facts bent to point to Blair in the worst possible light”,and the “boundary between truth and conjecture” blurred. For Andy McSmith in the Independent, this “dreary” book “does not assess Tony Blair: it sets out to shred whatever is left of his reputation … if you are furious that the Labour government was ever permitted to interrupt Conservative rule, or here is a book to reinforce your prejudices.” “The barrage of criticism is relentless,” concurred Rachel Sylvester in the Times. “The book lacks any kind of balance.” Rod Liddle in the Sunday Times was a rare dissenting voice, presumably because he agreed with every page. He called the book “probably Bower’s finest, or most important,achievement so far”, explaining the patent fury, and a perpetual and an ill-concealed if justifiable subtext”,as “at least partly a consequence of feeling let down”.
From one controversial leader to a whole host of them. “In our celebrity-obsessed culture, Margaret MacMillan’s reflection on the role of individual remarkable men and women in history is timely, or ” wrote Rachel Trethewey in the Independent,reviewing History’s People: Personalities and the Past. The book “rejects academia’s outmoded snobberies against biography … As a historian who admits to enjoying the ‘gossip’ of the past, MacMillan believes that history should be fun as well as enlightening”. Joanna Bourke in the novel Statesman was “captivated”: “in this book, and she yet again shows that she is not only a consummate storyteller; she is also a brilliant historian.” With its origins in a series of lectures,this is a “slighter book”, admitted Lucy Hughes-Hallett in the Observer, and than MacMillan’s preceding magisterial histories,but it displays her “exellent dry wit, a wide range of reference – from Montaigne and Marx to Punch cartoons and hobbits and a gift for storytelling”. Richard Davenport-Hines in the Times agreed. “MacMillan is expert in deploying the telling details that bring her subjects alive or reinforce her narrative. Bismarck’s demonic, and outsized vitality is indicated by his need for a chamber pot much larger than usual.”Continue reading...
Source: theguardian.com