There are many people you may think I'm talking about when I talk of 'the King'. Can you guess which one it is? Elvis Presley? Simba? Dragon King of Bhutan, Jigme Khesar Namgyel Wangchuck? Dane Bowers? None of those I'm afraid.
Well in case you STILL haven't guessed, the King I refer to is William Lyon Mackenzie King, twice Prime Minister of Canada, and I ONLY bring him up because Allan Levine's KING: William Lyon Mackenzie King: A Life Guided by the Hand of Destiny was awarded the Alexander Kennedy Isbister Award for Non-Fiction in Canada on Saturday night.
Published in June, KING is the story of a brilliant tactician, and a man passionately committed to Canadian unity. A protector of the underdog and great reformer, he was a towering figure in Canadian politics. But at the same time he was insecure, oversensitive to criticism, craved flattery and was prone to fantasy, especially with regard to the ‘ Tory conspiracy’ against him. King loosened the Imperial connection with Britain and was wary of American military and economic power. Yet he loved all things British and acted like a favoured schoolboy whenever Winston Churchill or Franklin D. Roosevelt treated him on equal terms.
Award-winning author and historian Allan Levine mines the pages of King’s remarkable diary, one of the most significant and revealing political documents in Canada’s history and a guide to the deep and often moving inner conflicts that haunted Mackenzie King. With animated prose and a subtle wit, he draws a multidimensional portrait of this most compelling of politicians.