Volume 4, Number 5 · April 8, 1965
Room at the Top
By Bernard Crick
Harold Wilson: The Authentic Portrait
by Leslie Smith
Scribner's, 231 pp., $4.95
Purpose in Politics
by Harold Wilson
Houghton Mifflin, 270 pp., $4.95
The campaign biography is essentially a democratic literary genre. It can only exist as an institution in a society where becoming is more important than being; such books lack plots, indeed are subversive, in a society such as England where status is settled by education and accent, not by achievement. Indeed it has been almost exclusively American—on no other kind of literature could one indulge such dialectic passions of cynicism and sentimentality as on, to go no further back, those hasty, loving books about Ike, Nixon, Barry, even Adlai, and even, alas, on poor Kennedy. It is an interesting sign of social change that such books now occur in Britain. The long awaited rise of democracy in English life—not just in electoral machinery—may yet be not that far off once again. Even the 14th Earl of Home was given one—a book best forgotten, except by collectors of the bizarre.
Review, 1841 words
To read the full text of this piece, please choose one of the following options:
|
If you are already a subscriber to the Review's electronic edition, please sign in: |
To subscribe to the electronic edition, please press the button below. |
To purchase access to this article for $3, please press the button below. |