Servants of the People

Apr 29, 2025 5:52 PM

Author:Andrew Rawnsley

Andrew Rawnsley's Servants of the People is a timely and fascinating look at New Labour.

Every new government promises to represent a new dawn, but for New Labour it was the Covenant that Tony Blair made with Britain. The party that won a landslide victory on May Day 1997 made the special claim that it represented a decisive break with the disappointments of the old left and the old right: its Third Way would transcend both. Having fashioned an extraordinarily wide coalition to secure power, New Labour would hold it as Servants of the People. Was that a grandiloquent way of saying the government would be enslaved to the opinion polls? Or has Tony Blair been pursuing a strategic plan, breathtaking in its audacity, to remake the political landscape of Britain in the third millennium?

'Downing Street is said to be 'furious' at this book - and it is easy to understand why. It is the first meticulous chronicle of all that has happened since that bright May Day three years ago which first brought the Blair government to office' Anthony Howard, Sunday Times

'Riveting ... the Government's dirty washing has been well and truly hung out in public' Rachel Sylvester, Daily Telegraph

Andrew Rawnsley is associate editor and chief political commentator for the Observer. For many years he presented BBC Radio 4's Sunday evening Westminster Hour, and he has also made a number of highly acclaimed television documentaries.

Reviews

A thoroughly splendid history of an exceedingly complicated subject...Read and fisher review events before the 20th century at a brisk pace, as a prologue to the great drama spread across three quarters of their book...and as the narrative proceeds towards the final act at midnight on 14 August 1947, so it becomes more scholarly. the characteristics of the principal cast are memorably presented

—— Geoffrey Moorhouse , Daily Telegraph

What Indians needed in their golden jubilee year was some good old personality-driven political history of the Raj...and that is exactly what Read and Fisher have done...They have made the most eventful years of our history as fascinating as they should be

—— Indian Sunday Express

The narrative goes beyond the chronicling of historical fact and assumes a quality of subtle story-telling. It is well-paced, intelligent and perceptive, scripted with a measure of the assurance that bridges the best of fiction and non-fiction writing. More importantly, there is love and sympathy for its subject, a human quality is achieved only when the text goes beyond mere documentation. The quality of writing - its pungency and sense of theatre - is matched by the rigorousness of the research...One of the profound epic tales of modern world history

—— Financial Times

With the selective skill of a great master painter who makes the most minute detail play its part in the whole composition, Vincent Cronin has, in this distinguished book, sifted for us the living spectacle of the quattrocento in the hub of Tuscany.

—— Scotsman

A real-life Hunt For Red October

—— New York Times

From page one, it reads like a novel. How they uncovered all this stuff is remarkable

—— Don Imus

The most comprehensive look at the work of these intrepid sailors . . . A celebration of their ingenuity and valor

—— Baltimore Sun

Reads like an adventure novel, but it's all to real

—— Seyour M. Hersh, author of The Dark Side of Camelot

The veterans of the 'Silent Service' are silent no more

—— John Lehman, former Secretary of the Navy , Wall Street Journal

Previous Article：The Proudest Day Next Article：Blood Of Spain

Comments

Welcome to zzdbook comments! Please keep conversations courteous and on-topic. To fosterproductive and respectful conversations, you may see comments from our Community Managers.