Didn’t You Use to Be Chris Mullin? Diaries 2010–2022
By Chris Mullin
‘The Queen was at the next table. I caught her staring at me during the national anthem and half-wondered whether someone had pointed me out as the author of that incident which the Mail on Sunday had splashed all over the front page of its review section, about which she would not have been too pleased.’
No longer in the tent, but not quite out of it, celebrated diarist Chris Mullin gives his take on the twelve turbulent years since he left Parliament. With his trademark wit and keen eye for the absurd, he recounts events from the fall of New Labour to the death of the Queen. Rich in anecdote, this candid new volume includes encounters with movers and shakers from all political parties and with citizens from all walks of life, from dustmen to dukes.
“One of Mullin’s charms is his readiness to like people who don’t echo his politics.”
Jenni Russell, Sunday Times
Reviews
“Wickedly indiscreet and elegant”
Mail on Sunday
“He will join Chips Channon, Duff Cooper and Alan Clark in the pantheon of truly great diarists”
Matthew d’Ancona, Evening Standard
“These are the sharpest and most revealing political diaries since Alan Clark’s”
Simon Hoggart, The Guardian
“Gems sprinkled across every page”
Peter Hain, The Observer
“Justly celebrated as masterpieces of the genre”
Rafael Behr, New Statesman
“What comes over very plainly is Mullin’s fundamental decency and honesty”
Alan Bennett
“Another riveting tour de force … Mullin has not only mellowed but in retirement become a British institution.”
Peter Hain, The House
“A truly perceptive personal record of the most turbulent decade in the nation’s public life since the Second World War … in turn reflective and frank, acerbic and sometimes laugh-out-loud funny.”
Julia Langdon, The Tablet
“Chris Mullin’s eye for the absurd remains as keen as ever … The political one-liners are highly entertaining.”
Francis Beckett, The Spectator
“Cutting but never cruel, and refreshingly unpartisan in his observations, Mullin’s outsider-looking-in perspective provides a fascinating commentary on a turbulent period in our history.”
Choice
“Shrewd in his insights, elegant in his style, and waspish in his judgments, he has rightly been described as the Labour equivalent of the late Alan Clark … He has a wonderful sense of the absurd, a spirit of amused detachment, and a novelist’s gift of narrative … He undoubtedly deserves his place in the pantheon of chroniclers.”
Leo McKinstry, Daily Express
“Mullin skilfully weaves the personal with the political.”
Financial Times
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- Hardback, 572 pages
- ISBN: 9781785907913
- 11 May 2023
- £25.00
- eBook
- ISBN: 9781785908002
- 11 May 2023
- £19.99