John Major: The Autobiography - Tapa dura

Reseña del editor

The most personal and revealing autobiography to date of any British Prime Minister.

·The memoirs of the Right Honourable John Major, M. P., will be the most eagerly awaited biography of the year. His intention in writing the book is to give as open and accurate an account of his time in office as possible; and he will not be pulling any punches.
·Major’s early life is itself extraordinary, and the opening chapters make for compelling reading in themselves. Thereafter he cut his political teeth in the hurly-burly of metropolitan local council politics in Lambeth, and after entering Parliament he became a Whip. His rise was meteoric; a favourite of Margaret Thatcher, he was soon to become Foreign Secretary and then rapidly Chancellor. When Thatcher fell he fought a brilliant campaign to become her successor, and won. Soon after came the Gulf War, then Maastricht; then he won the General Election of 1992, itself a considerable achievement.
·It was, of course, the events of Black Wednesday and the ensuing battles over British engagement, or otherwise, with Europe that were to prove the Major government’s most taxing challenges, and John Major will be frank about what he tried to do and about those who opposed him. But not all was darkness; the first steps on the long road to the Good Friday Agreement were taken by him, and many initiatives in foreign affairs, in the US and over Bosnia, were to prove sound. Under him, too, the economy began to recover; yet the media would have none of it, concentrating instead on the mounting tide of ‘sleaze’ stories, and confusing the central message of the ‘Back to Basics’ campaign.
·Faced with growing internal opposition Major routed his opponents with the 1995 leadership election and the challenge to ‘put up or shut up’; yet, as in so many things over that period, almost everything that could go wrong did so, and soon the Mad Cow beef war was upon us. In 1997 a new order was brought to power, and Major acted with a dignity seldom seen in politics; after his demise, the Conservative party collapsed into a furore of infighting, and his incumbency may be remembered as the last time for many years when the party was to look like a real power in the land.
·Major oversaw the ending of an era, and this book will be full of personal stories and reflections about those trying times, which were also sometimes good times and entertaining times, and which, written with a certain terse verve, make for very enjoyable, and certainly highly illuminating, reading. This will be a ground-breaking book of its kind.

Biografía del autor

Born in 1943, John Major was a member of Lambeth Borough Council 1968-71, then entered Parliament in 1979; he was PPS to Ministers of State at the Home Office 1981-83, an assistant Govt Whip 1983-4, a Govt Whip 1984-5, Minister for Social Security 1986-7, Chief Sec. to HM Treasury 1987-9; Foreign Secretary 1989, Chancellor 1989-90, and Prime Minister 1990-97.