Changes

Also represented are the thoughts of postwar party leaders such as Harold Macmillan and Hugh Gaitskell, and a remark from Churchill’s private secretary Sir John Colville on how in 1952 Mrs Churchill did not think her husband would last long as Prime Minister. In fact, despite failing health he clung on for almost another two years. Gyles Brandreth, better known as a author and broadcaster before his single term at Westminster, spends an hour with William Hague as leader of the opposition and finds him likeable, clear-headed, articulate, thoughtful and shrewd, and in theatrical terms ‘a first-class leading man’, but not a star like Blair. Other politicians whose thoughts have been culled include Leo Amery, Barbara Castle, Paddy Ashdown, Edwina Currie, and Oona King.

As an aside, there are occasional random thoughts on contemporary Culture. In 1960 Noel Coward lambasts Samuel Beckett’s ‘Waiting for Godot’ as ''pretentious gibberish, without any claim to importance whatsoever''. Malcolm Muggeridge reminiscences about the day a year later when he dropped into a teenage rock’n’roll joint in Hamburg to see a little-known English band from Liverpool, who recognised him, ''bashing their instruments and emitting nerveless sounds into microphones''. (Even Winstone finds it unnecessary to remind us who they were, though or perhaps because John Lennon is mentioned in a footnote on the same page). Michael Palin writes wistfully about how a small portion of our everyday language dies forever and is replaced with the advent of decimal currency in 1971, but he personally resents postal codes and all-figure telephone numbers in London far more. John Rae, then headmaster of Westminster School, pours scorn in 1975 on the idea that Britain should no longer pass on a mono-cultural tradition and the watering down of British history and literature to suit ethnic minorities.