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Parliamentary Affairs Advance Access originally published online on October 31, 2008
Parliamentary Affairs 2009 62(1):178-188; doi:10.1093/pa/gsn042
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© The Author [2008]. Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of the Hansard Society for Parliamentary Government; all rights reserved. For permissions, please e-mail: journals.permissions@oxfordjournals.org

Gordon Brown, Past, Present and Future

The Blair Years: Extracts from the Alastair Campbell Diaries

Over to You, Mr Brown

Psychological Socialism: The Labour Party and Qualities of Mind and Character, 1931 to the Present

Blair's Britain, 1997–2007

Eric Shaw

The University of Stirling

Correspondence: e.d.shaw@stirling.ac.uk

F. BECKETT, Gordon Brown, Past, Present and Future, Haus, 2007, 222pp, pb. £10.99.

A. CAMPBELL, The Blair Years: Extracts from the Alastair Campbell Diaries, Hutchinson, 2007, 816pp, hb. £25.00.

A. GIDDENS, Over to You, Mr Brown, Polity Press, 2007, 236pp, pb. £9.99. K.O. Morgan, Michael Foot: A Life, HarperPress, 2007, 568pp, hb. £25.

J. NUTTALL, Psychological Socialism: The Labour Party and Qualities of Mind and Character, 1931 to the Present, Manchester University Press, 2006, 213pp, hb.

A. SELDON (ed.) Blair's Britain, 1997–2007, Cambridge University Press, 2007, 690pp, pb. £15.99.

The first 150 words of the full text of this article appear below.

This review will be divided into two sections. The first will consist of individual observations about each of the books under review. The second, longer section, will explore some general themes which recur in all or most of the books.


   Gordon Brown, Past, Present and Future
 
This book is designed for the general reader, being an entertainingly written canter through Brown's political life. Its primary sources consist mainly of an extended interview with the man himself plus conversations with a range of Labour politicians and Brownite aides and lieutenants. The choice of the title is significant. Brown, Beckett tells us, ‘has a feel for the past ... He sees the way in which the present follows from the past’.1 Unlike Blair, he has deep roots in the Labour party. This does not mean that he has working class roots—his background is impeccably middle class—nor that he rose through the trade union movement but, rather, that he . . . [Full Text of this Article]


   The Blair Years
 

   Over to You, Mr. Brown
 

   Michael Foot
 

   Psychological socialism
 

   Blair's Britain
 

   New Labour: the revival or exhaustion of British social democracy?
 

   Dissenters and conformists
 

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