Bernard Donoughue has produced several valuable books, one of them a biography of Herbert Morrison (written with George Jones) and another an account of No. 10 under the Labour governments of the 1970s, which contains the often quoted, though rarely acknowledged, observation of James Callaghan just before the 1970 election, to the effect that there was a tide in politics which prime ministers were powerless to resist. Lord Donoughue’s Downing Street diaries came later.
The first volume, on his days as a ‘special adviser’ to Harold Wilson, was dominated not so much by Wilson as by Marcia Williams, Lady Falkender. Indeed, ‘Marcia’s Tantrums’ would have served as a catchier subtitle than ‘With Harold Wilson in No. 10’. After a while, however, we grew tired of the endless stamped feet and slammed doors. With Callaghan, something like normal service is resumed.
But even Jim was not entirely conventional.
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