‘The politics of Paul Foot are an extraordinary mixture of first-class reporting, primitive Marxism, family wit and fantasy.’ This judgment is taken from a review of Foot’s first book, The Politics of Harold Wilson (1968). The reviewer was well placed to assess it, and, according to this biography, he ‘tore the book apart’. As well as being an MP, he was Paul’s uncle, Michael Foot.
Born in 1937, Paul Foot came from a political family. His grandfather, Isaac, and his eldest uncle, Dingle, were both Liberal MPs; his father, Hugh, was a distinguished diplomat who, as Lord Caradon, would become a foreign office minister; and his uncle Michael became a cabinet minister and Labour’s next leader but one after Wilson. Perhaps just as significant, they were all bookish, especially Isaac, who was said to possess 2,000 volumes on the French Revolution alone. Michael would describe his father as ‘a bibliophilial drunkard’ – and he should know, as he drank at the same fountain. Paul, too, became addicted to books; his journeys around the country were made longer by detours to remote secondhand bookshops. He developed a special passion for Shelley, whom he saw as a political poet. He wrote his biography, Red Shelley (1981), and lectured about Shelley to coal miners. He bribed his sons to learn ‘The Masque of Anarchy’ by heart.
As a person, Foot was energetic, passionate and fiercely competitive, and exhilarating, life-enhancing company. As a journalist, he was dogged, persistent, good at detail and a friend to the friendless. ‘Footy’ was much admired by his fellow scribes, who twice voted him Journalist of the Year.
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