We’re delighted that 8* books from Biteback Publishing and The Robson Press have made their way on to Keith Simpson MP’s famous summer reading list.

 

 

Clement Attlee: The Inevitable Prime Minister
Michael Jago

Attlee is always rated highly as a Prime Minister by British political scientists and has been well served by biographers including Kenneth Harris, Frances Beckett and Thomas-Symonds. So perhaps not much more to add? Well Michael Jago in Clement Attlee: The Inevitable Prime Minister has discovered some new sources and has admirably reworked old ones to show that that whilst Attlee was lucky, he has experience, determination and grit. One for Ed Miliband.

 

 

Prison Diaries
Denis MacShane

For those parliamentarians unfortunate enough to have fallen foul of the law and thus served Her Majesty under constraint, there is always the opportunity to keep a diary and write about those experiences – Jeffrey Archer and Jonathan Aitken being two examples. Now the former Labour MP Denis MacShane has followed that example and written Prison Diaries.

 

 

The Eye of the Storm: The View from the Centre of the Political Scandal
Rob Wilson

Rob Wilson, Conservative MP and PPS to the Chancellor, wrote a very good study on the formation of the present Coalition. In The Eye of the Storm he considers how politicians and ministers deal with political and personal crises, including Charles Clarke, Jacqui Smith, William Hague, Jeremy Hunt and Vince Cable.

 

 

How To Be A Minister
John Hutton and Leigh Lewis

In their time, both David Davis and Gerald Kaufman have written “bluffer’s guides” on how to be a minister. Now former Labour Cabinet Minister John Hutton with Leigh Lewis, have brought their experiences up to date with their own How To Be a Minister. A must for ambitious thrusters in the Conservative Parliamentary Party 2010 intake.

 

 

The Last Victorians: A Daring Reassessment of Four Twentieth Century Eccentrics
W. Sydney Robinson

Famously, Lytton Strachey’s Eminent Victorians (1918) ridiculed the great ones of the nineteenth century. Now W Sydney Robinson, who recently wrote a well received biography of the Victorian investigative journalist W T Stead, has written The Last Victorians: A Daring Reassessment of Four Twentieth Century Eccentrics. They are William Joynson-Hicks 1866-1932, the moralising Home Secretary; W R Inge (1860-1954), the gloomy Dean of St Paul’s Cathedral; John Reith, 1889-1971, the moralising and intemperate founder of the BBC, and Arthur Bryant (1899-1985), the ultra patriotic popular historian and journalist.

 

 

The Too Difficult Box: The Big Issues Politicians Can’t Crack
Edited by Charles Clarke

Government, like many professions and businesses, is susceptible to kicking difficult problems into the long grass. The former Labour Cabinet Minister Charles Charke, experienced government under Blair and has been fascinated by the habit of Whitehall to prevaricate and avoid taking difficult decisions. In The Too Difficult Box: The Big Issues Politicians Can’t Crack he has edited a series of lectures by former ministers and experts on all the big issues frequently avoided, from Europe, national security, climate change, pensions, banking regulation, immigration, Lords reform, to assisted dying, just to mention a few. Proactive and stimulating as an editor, Charles Clarke shows what a loss he is to the political world.

 

 

Tennis Maestros: The Twenty Greatest Male Tennis Players of All Time
John Bercow

Speaker Bercow has always been a very keen, competitive tennis player and coach. He has written Tennis Maestros: The Twenty Greatest Male Tennis Players of All Time. Perhaps he will also write a second volume on the twenty greatest female tennis players of all time?

 

 

Finding The Plot: 100 Graves To Visit Before You Die
Ann Treneman

Ann Treneman the Times parliamentary sketch writer has written a fascinating if at times macabre book Finding the Plot: 100 Graves to Visit Before You Die. She accepts it is a personal choice and is open to suggestions regarding omissions. I have suggested she includes the gravestone of Parson James Woodforde the eighteenth century diarist who was rector of Weston Longville in my Norfolk constituency.

 

For the full reading list click here

*Apologies for our initial error, there are in fact 8 Biteback books on the summer reading list!