Too much and too late

By the criteria of the day before yesterday, the late William Whitelaw, a much loved Tory politician who served as Mrs Thatcher’s deputy leader, must have seemed a good circulation bet for a successful biography. Most people, after all, would have heard of him, if only because of Mrs Thatcher’s memorable remark that ‘every prime minister needs a Willie’. In addition, however, to acting his most valuable role as a restraining influence on Prime Minister Thatcher, he was also a controversial Secretary of State for Northern Ireland, a well-thought-of Home Secretary, Chief Whip and leader of the House of Lords, not to mention a second world war hero and a very perfect model of a public-spirited, land-owning Tory grandee of the calibre and character which used to provide the old ruling class with its ballast and ‘bottom’. What is more, one of the two authors appointed by Lord Whitelaw to write his biography would have rightly seemed to promise the book a good run for the publisher’s money. For having been for 30 years a highly regarded political writer for the Guardian and a veteran supporter of Old Labour, Aitken could be guaranteed not to produce a work of hagiographical piety. On all these counts, therefore, this book could have been expected to be something of a publishing event.

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Unfortunately, I fear that it won’t be, in spite of being elegantly written, admirably researched and full of original material. For even your reviewer, an erstwhile political journalist himself who also very much admired Willie Whitelaw, could scarcely refrain from yawning. And the reason is sad and simple. British politics are no longer at all interesting; even worse, they are positively a turn-off. Just as not many bother to read the political coverage in the daily newspapers, unless scandals are involved, so do even fewer want to pay £20 or so to be reminded years later of events which they did not find worth reading first time round.