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Eminent Elizabethans by Piers Brendon (view source)
Revision as of 12:05, 25 August 2020
, 12:05, 25 August 2020no edit summary
When the hardback edition was published in 2012, Margaret Thatcher was still alive. A minor adjustment was necessary in this paperback reissue to mention her death and funeral. His assessment of her life and years in power is reasonably even-handed if generally critical in tone. Those of us who can recall clearly at first hand every major incident of her life as party leader as breaking news, from her taking on a dismissive, thrice-defeated Edward Heath in 1974, to her resignation sixteen years later, can appreciate that hindsight now allows historians to assess the pros and cons of what she did. One can hardly argue with the assessment that the Falklands War ‘was the making and the breaking of her’, and that subsequent euphoria obscured the cost in human lives and money in fighting for islands that her government did not want. It is balanced by a few personal asides, notably her confession to daughter Carol that she had a deep fear of failure – a comment markedly at odds with the public image.
However, events have rather overtaken the final portrait in the book – that of Mick Jagger. Two years ago, the general perception was that he had outgrown and lost interest in the Rolling Stones and that they were about to fade into the ether. Recently their fiftieth -anniversary celebrations and tour (or should we call it the Stones’ golden jubilee for short?) and a much-lauded appearance at the 2013 Glastonbury festival have silenced most of the doubters. Nevertheless, this is a portrait of an astonishingly contradictory chameleon, a man who was once the arch-subversive yet later received a knighthood, the articulate, well-educated and well-read dilettante who can play the insolent, barely coherent yobbo at the drop of a hat. His constant collaborator, groupmate and sparring partner Keith Richards, who allegedly threatened to slit his throat if he toured without the group and performed their songs on stage, once summed him up as ‘a bunch of guys’ and ‘it’s up to him which one you meet’. Brendon’s musical knowledge (or lack of it) lets him down, however, when he confuses Jagger’s third solo album with an earlier one by the Stones and calls it ‘Undercover Spirit’.
Although the book tells us little that is new, it makes for a very enjoyable read about four of the most controversial figures of our time. It must be said though that little debunking of each figure was required – that had already been comprehensively done by others. Perhaps a second volume with a searching spotlight on John Lennon, Princess Diana, Tony Blair and Robert Maxwell would be a fitting sequel.
[[Life by Keith Richards]]
[[Eminent Hipsters by Donald Fagen]]
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