Diaries Volume One

Oct 24, 2024 3:13 AM

Author:Alastair Campbell

Diaries Volume One

As Alastair Campbell said in the introduction to The Blair Years, it was always his intention to publish the full version, covering his time as spokesman and chief strategist to Tony Blair. Prelude to Power is the first of four volumes, and covers the early days of New Labour, culminating in their victory at the polls in 1997.

Volume 1 details the extraordinary tensions between Tony Blair and Gordon Brown as they resolved the question as to which one should stand to become Labour leader. It shows that right from the start, relations at the top were prone to enormous strain, suspicions and accusations of betrayal. Yet it also shows the political and personal bonds that tied them together, and which made them one of the most feared and respected electoral machines anywhere in the world.

A story of politics in the raw, Prelude to Power is above all an intimate, detailed portrait of the people who have done so much to shape modern history.

Reviews

Campbell is a compelling diarist ... The Campbell Diaries provide the fullest insider account so far of new Labour's ascent to power

—— The Times

Hugely gripping . . . all of human life is here. It makes The Thick of It look tame. And sane

—— Sunday Times

Campbell's world is the brutal, angry, hard-driven, jokey, football-crazed and intensely male world of tabloid journalism. He is a fluent and industrious reporter, with amazing stamina

—— The Telegraph

There are plenty of nuggets here that are fascinating, some passages that make you wince and others that are gripping. It has historical value

—— Observer

Campbell is a fluent and industrious reporter, with amazing stamina

—— Daily Telegraph

These diaries will be gasped at, and relied upon, for decades to come

—— The Times

Lucid, absorbing

—— DAILY EXPRESS

The numerous fans of her Aristocrats (in which number I include myself) will not be disappointed: here is the same judicious mixture of intimacy and scholarship

—— Antonia Fraser , Sunday Times

A Royal Affair is an entertaining tale ...Tillyard's account of the brothers is heroic...[she] tells this astonishing tale with bravura

—— John de Falbe , Daily Telegraph

She has returned to what she knows-and does-best, teasing out the bonds of love, hate and pretend indifference that bind siblings, no matter what their historical pedigree, into a cat's cradle of consequence

—— Economist

The story is brilliantly told. In its descriptive flourishes it is sometimes fearlessly novelistic, yet it travels long distances for scholarly scruples

—— John Mullan , Times Literary Supplement

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