Let me nail my colours clearly to the mast: I would prefer to eat my own spleen, or listen to a Gordon Brown speech, than read the memoirs of a barrister/politician. The remaindered lists are groaning under these unsellable, unreadable, dusty monuments to over-inflated egos. They should be pulped and moulded into bed pans.
However, Ivan Lawrence’s splendid book, My Life of Crime — out in paperback later this month — is very much the exception. Ivan, a distinguished QC and formerly a high-profile MP, lives life to the full and this book is brimful of classy anecdotes and well worth the read.
Ivan and I have been friends for nearly 30 years, and this book tells me things about him I never knew. For instance, when he was a young national serviceman in Malta, he managed to prevent British ships in the Mediterranean sinking a part of the US Eighth Fleet, which had sent submarines to thwart Anthony Eden’s disastrous Suez campaign.
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