POLITICAL memoirs are notoriously dull. too often they are just exercises in vanity or historical duty, revealing little about the the innermost thoughts of their authors. Nigel lawson’s vast doorstop of an autobiography, for instance, touched on almost nothing outside the arid details of his work as Mrs thatcher’s chancellor in the 1980s, while the book by clement attlee, the post-war labour Prime Minis- ter, could have hardly been more devoid of colour. “This is not so much the picture of a life as a greatly expanded entry in Who’s Who,” wrote one critic.
