Aneurin Bevan, the Minister who set up the National Health Service in 1948, once said: “I understand Mr Macmillan (PM 1957-63) reads political biographies. My experience of public life has taught me to know that most of them are entirely unreliable. I would rather take my fiction straight.”

Bevan’s strictures certainly apply to political autobiographies, which are often unreliable records, rarely very revealing or at all reflective. Almost all are too long. Former politicians tend to exaggerate their own importance and influence, while belittling or ignoring that of old colleagues.

Political biography however is a different genre altogether and many excellent ones have been written. Each of our Prime Ministers has been the subject of several biographies. Though I do not claim to have to read them all, among the very best are Ben Pimlott’s Harold Wilson; Roy Jenkins’ Churchill and Gladstone; and John Bew’s Citizen Clem about Clement Attlee.

But few of our Prime Ministers have had a life and interests outside politics, and lacking this ‘hinterland’ they often seem two dimensional figures.

Churchill is the great exception, with his very long, colourful, eventful life and a political career that spanned more than 60 years. He has been the subject of numerous biographies. Macmillan, whom I think was perhaps the most successful of our post-war prime ministers, also had a long political career, served in both World Wars, and had interests beyond day to day politics. There are several good biographies of him. I would recommend one of the earliest and one of the shortest, Anthony Sampson’s Macmillan, A Study in Ambiguity.

A successful political biography should be thoroughly researched; fair (neither hatchet job nor hagiography); offer fresh assessments and new insights; sketch enough contemporary history to set a context; and bring its subject to life. Those mentioned above achieve this in addition to all being well-written.

Michael Foot’s two-volume life of Aneurin Bevan is for me the outstanding political biography. Foot was a close friend of Bevan, and this personal knowledge helped him describe his personality and presence. It is partisan, so fails one of my tests, but you come away from it feeling you know and understand Bevan, who was one of the most compelling and impressive, and most controversial and charismatic of politicians.

And running a close second to this I would nominate Roy Jenkins’ Gladstone. It fully captures his character and interests, his long political career, and the mark he left on Victorian Britain. It convinced me that Gladstone was our greatest ever Prime Minister.

It would be good to hear of any political biographies readers would nominate as ‘outstanding’.

Lance Christopher

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