The Journals of Woodrow Wyatt Vol. 3: From Major to Blair - Hardcover

Curtis, Sarah

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 033377406X ISBN 13: 9780333774069

Publisher: Macmillan, 2000

Synopsis

The third and final volume of Wyatt's scandalous journals The final journals of Woodrow Wyatt cover the period from the 1992 election to his death at the end of 1997. By now in his late seventies, Wyatt is as busy as ever, still writing his columns for The Times and the News of the World, continuing his reign as Chairman of the Tote, lobbying in the Lords and mixing with the Royal Family, the aristocracy and movers and shakers in every field of life. Thatcher has long been deposed but he is no less close to the centre of power. He has successfully transferred his allegiance to Major but risks all to defend his friend Norman Lamont when he gets into hot water. In these final years, Wyatt comes more and more to rely upon his journals as an outlet for his deeply private thoughts. As cancer is diagnosed in September 1997, he is typically optimistic and courageous. Some of the final entries as he faces his cancer are extremely moving.Praise for Volumes 1 & 2: 'A rich pudding of gossip, indiscretion, impish humour, malice and politics.' Sunday Times'This is an authentic account of his times, and useful and readable because of it.' Andrew Marr, Observer

About this title

Review

Whether coincidence or otherwise, most of the best political diarists seem to have been of a Tory bent. The 1930s saw Chips Channon, and of recent times the people's favourite, in Blair-speak, has been the late Alan Clark. However, a richer palate might feast on the musings of former Labour MP Woodrow Wyatt, the self-appointed Voice of Reason, who facilitated the posthumous vanity publication of his diaries as a pension for his surviving family. Covering the Major years (though perhaps beyond his own peak), from the general election in 1992 until three months before his death in December 1997, aged 79, Wyatt's self-referential intimacies present brown-nosing of the highest order in his obsessive quest to keep the Chairmanship of the Tote and his newspaper columns, which netted him over £250,000 a year. An endless barrage of dinner parties, ingratiating conversations and geriatric leching occupied Wyatt's leisure hours when not fretting over money, with a primary concern of reconciling Major--"You are a great man", he told him, noting without discernible irony that "history will see him as such"--with his increasingly eccentric predecessor. The presiding deity, though, is Rupert Murdoch, to whom Wyatt desperately toadies, and who brings the diaries to a catastrophic (for Wyatt) climax, when he switches his allegiance to Blair.

Editor Sarah Curtis should be applauded for making a molehill out of a mountain, in reducing the original three million words by a factor of 10. Indiscreet, yet chiding indiscretion in others (Beryl Bainbridge alone is exempt from criticism), the main amusement from these latter journals comes from the buffet of inadvertent humour and pathos arising from his resolute lack of introspection. Wyatt thought Alan Clark was "mad as a hatter", while the predatory Clark disingenuously scorned the Voice of Reason as "gaga". This was unfair. As charming in cigar-puffing person as his ilk so often are, these silly snobberies, never knowingly understated, serve to expose the serious absence of a genuine British political class, a sourly lingering aftertaste to such frippery. --David Vincent

Synopsis

The final volume of Woodrow Wyatt's journals cover the period from the 1992 election to his death in 1997. In these final years, Wyatt comes more and more to rely upon his journals as an outlet for his thoughts. As cancer is diagnosed in September 1997, he is typically optimistic and courageous.

About this edition

• Publisher: Macmillan
• Publication date: 2000
• ISBN 10: 033377406X
• ISBN 13: 9780333774069
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 848