No comments about History of England from the Accession of James I. to the Outbreak of the Civil War: 1603-1642: Volume 3: 1616-1621.

No comments about The Sociology of Oliver C. Cox: New Perspectives (Research in Race and Ethnic Relations) (Research in Race and Ethnic Relations) (Research in Race and Ethnic Relations).

1 comments about Man Behind the Smile: Tony Blair and the Politics of Perversion.

1. These are the author's own phrases characterising Blair's premiership, so first a word about who he is. Leo Abse, now in his late 80's, is a retired Labour member of parliament from the mining community of South Wales. He is the author of a similar study of Margaret Thatcher, but what I had mainly remembered about him was the story of a meeting he addressed in his own locality at which the chairman referred to him as `Mr Abs'. His surname has two syllables, so he murmured in the man's ear `Call me Abs-ey', to which the chairman replied `That's very nice of you, call me Jonesy'.

   He has a fine sense of humour himself, and some of the cattier sideswipes at various figures in this book are very entertaining. This is a study from a psychoanalytic viewpoint, and it takes in not just The People's Tony himself but his wife, the Chancellor of the Exchequer Gordon Brown, the fearsome former Downing Street media supremo Alistair Campbell, Blair's political Svengali Peter Mandelson and certain others. The book originally appeared in 1996 before Blair came to power under the title Tony Blair: the Man Behind the Smile, with updated editions in 2001 and 2003. The problem for me with a psychoanalytic account is that I do not have enough knowledge of the technique to form an independent judgment of my own. Abse's approach is distinctly partisan and hostile, as his phrases that I have used in my caption to this review make very clear. It is all easy enough to understand, it is coherent, systematic and seemingly well-researched (sources are listed at the back) but there is no question that this is a full-scale frontal attack on Blair as a politician. An analysis using this technique belittles its subject, as this book is manifestly intended to do, and ordinary detachment and fairness suggests that there must be at least some temptation, for someone fluent in the terminology, to use it to promote a point of view rather than carry out a genuinely objective enquiry.

   Abse is `old Labour' as he says himself, and he draws his inspiration from the post-war Labour government whose socialising approach he believed Blair could have emulated. Among more recent Labour figures he singles out the late leader John Smith. I had the honour of knowing John personally long before Abse did, and all I can say is that if he really was the conflict-unaverse full-blooded socialist that Abse depicts he must have changed a good deal since I used to know him. Whether Abse is precisely `left-wing' is questionable, and he is manifestly unimpressed by certain recidivist trade union leaders of the kind who made the trade union movement as deeply disliked as it became in the 1960's and 1970's. He is basically a fair-minded and decent-minded socialist who believes that Blair and his motley outfit of modernisers have, in his own words, stolen the soul of his party. He recognises explicitly that the kind of social legislation he aspires to is not going to be achieved without conflict. However as he sees fit to characterise Gordon Brown as being willing to face up to anyone except himself (Brown, that is), I suppose I can legitimately question whether Abse in his turn is really facing up to the sort of obstacles his own preferred policies confront in this day and age. This is a book review, not any kind of political statement of my own. What I would have wanted from Abse is his own honest answer to the question `Given that Britain is a member of the European Union, and given even more the extent to which governments are in the hands of international capital, do you think you will achieve anything except disaster by taking on hopeless odds?' If the political will is there, anything might indeed be possible. Can he honestly claim to detect it at this stage of the world's history?

   There are real touches of brilliance in this book and it is in the main well-written, so much so that I shall ask - can there really be such a word as `aggressivity'? There wouldn't be if I had anything to do with it. There is categorically no such word as `wreaked', the word is `wrought'; it is a solecism to use `proportions' to mean dimensions; and does he mean `atactic' or `ataxic'? I enjoyed the book thoroughly. The sincere sense of disappointment that comes through it is shared from various political standpoints, not least from the prevalent view that we have no visible alternative government.

No comments about King Henry V - Parallel Texts of the First Quarto (1600) and First Folio (1623) Editions.

No comments about ROOSEVELT AND CHURCHILL: MEN OF SECRETS.

2 comments about Grandmama of Europe: The Crowned Descendants of Queen Victoria.

1. This book has helped me on more than one occasion, to sort out Queen Victoria's huge family. The book only rates four stars, because I dislike the way it is organized. But the information, as well as the detailed lineage is wonderful. Many of Mr. Aronson's books are out of print, but I find them quite frequently at the Strand in NYC or other used bookstores.



2. There's a famous painting by Tuxen (reproduced on the jacket of this fat volume) of Victoria's family gathered around her at the time of her Golden Jubilee in 1887; the crowd fills the royal drawing room. During those celebrations, the women of the family filled ten carriages while the men, including a number of ruling and future monarchs, made up an impromptu cavalry troop. Aronson is an old and skilled hand at producing popular biographies of European dynasties and he uses Victoria's position as matriarch of a vast royal clan to construct an overview in the late 19th and early 20th century of Europe's ruling families on ten thrones, from London and Madrid to Athens and St. Petersburg. This is also a personal and domestic study, focusing on court life, rather than a political history, and it is limited to only the first generation, not their heirs to the present day -- which also means that, except for the future Edward VIII, the author is concerned mostly with Victoria's daughters and granddaughters who married into other royal houses. The author's style is easy and his insights and judgments are astute, making this a good introduction to the modern monarchies of Europe.

No comments about Reginald Pole: Prince and Prophet (Cambridge Studies in Early Modern British History).

No comments about The Chronica Maiora of Thomas Walsingham (1376-1422).

No comments about Gladstone and Women.

No comments about Lord Churchill's Coup: The Anglo-American Empire and the Glorious Revolution Reconsidered.