Free At Last

This latest volume of the diaries of maverick Labour politician Tony Benn covers the election of Tony Blair as leader of the Labour Party followed by that of the first Labour government since Benn was himself a Minister under James Callaghan. Like its predecessors, the diary is full, free and frank, with many sketches of Parliamentary life, records of great and not-so-great occasions, shot through with Benn's often naive but always intensely personal and completely honest opinions. He is one of the - some would say the only - completely honest politicians in public life, and whether the reader agrees with his views or not, he speaks his mind with such transparent candour that it is impossible not to like him. He likes people, too - and while he loathes, for instance, the politics of John Major - and even more the politics of his own leader, Blair - with a bitterness bordering on fanaticism, he is happy to regard them as personal friends (showing a slightly surprised pleasure when they reciprocate). Apart from politics, his life is a happy and fulfilled one - though this volume of the diaries describes the death from cancer of his beloved wife Margaret, a talented woman in her own right, and is a touching and inspiriting record of how to deal with the death of a partner. The Benn diaries can be compared with those of Pepys, and no one interested in the politics of our time can afford not to know them. Now we must await the Benn film autobiography, for he has a passion for his miniature video camera, which he even smuggled into the House of Commons to record the last minutes of his long career there, before his resignation set him 'free at last'. (Kirkus UK)