My Kindle has Tom Bower's forthcoming biography of Jeremy Corbyn in
its list of recommendations. This will be because I bought other Bower biographies in the past, but is the Corbyn tome worth buying too?
Yet this hero of the far left has done his best to conceal much of his past and personal life from public scrutiny. In this book, best-selling investigative biographer Tom Bower reveals hidden truths about Corbyn's character, the causes and organisations he espouses, and Britain's likely fate under the Marxist-Trotskyist society he has championed since the early 1970s.
Bower's books on Tony Blair, Gordon Brown and Robert Maxwell were easy to read, well researched and packed with interesting detail. Well worth reading, but they did not greatly modify my previous outline view of Blair, Brown or Maxwell.
For the most part the books added lots of detail and provided reminders of context and other actors in the personal dramas of those three unlovely characters. They also added highlights to the ingrained vanity and the depths of cynicism they exhibited, particularly in the case of Blair and Maxwell.
However Corbyn may never be Prime Minister and may not be an interesting character. Perhaps not interesting enough to plough through what may well turn out to be a somewhat depressing biography. How could it be otherwise? The man’s politics are those of a radical teenager who never grew up. We may learn Bower's take on why he never grew up and if his pre-beard goofy appearance affected his politics or we may not.
And yet...
...people vote for him and forewarned is forearmed.
3 comments:
I found that Bower's biographies are in one sense a cut above the others, in that they are supported with very solid evidence. I read with horrified fascination about how Blair really was as bad as his enemies portrayed him.
There is of course a general question about whether it is ever worth delving deeper into the truth of things, or whether it is OK to remain at the level of prejudice and hearsay. Knowing the truth about Corbyn doesn't change what he is, or whether he gets into power. I suppose it makes one better informed in political discussions, that's all. I'll probably only buy it if Corbyn does strike it lucky and we are ushered into the socialist paradise. That's if I don't need to spend all my pension on turnips and those old paraffin heaters you recently featured.
Why not send the money on a decent bottle of wine, and just imagine - for a few brief moments - a Utopia far beyond the realms of a little bloke, paid by the state all his life, and pretty well worthless in society!
Ooops, sorry, bit political there..;0)
Sam - to my mind the solid evidence tends to be more of the same evidence we already had, but with more detail dispensed in a much shorter time scale. Bower's books feel like solid confirmation, but if we were not already on the same wavelength perhaps they would not be. I'd stock up on those turnips and paraffin heaters just in case though.
Scrobs - most of the time I ignore that little bloke, paid by the state all his life. Yet his situation is interesting simply because he is where he is instead of collecting up Tesco supermarket trolleys.
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