A Life at the Center: Memoirs of a Radical Reformer - Hardcover

Jenkins, Roy

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0679413111 ISBN 13: 9780679413110

Publisher: Random House, 1993

Synopsis

One of Britain's most important political leaders recounts his odyssey through British and world politics and offers penetrating portraits of Wilson, Thatcher, the Kennedys, Nixon, and other memorable personalities.

About this title

From Kirkus Reviews:

Jenkins--author (Truman, 1986, etc.); chancellor of Oxford University; former home secretary and chancellor of the exchequer in various Labour governments--engagingly turns his formidable narrative skills to his own fascinating life. The author's father, a coal-miner of Welsh origin, was, we learn, an ardent unionist who attended Oxford on a union scholarship and became a prominent Labour member of Parliament. Jenkins himself, after a brilliant career at Oxford and as a wartime code-breaker, entered Parliament as a member for Southwark, espousing traditional Labour positions. In Parliament, he came under the influence of Hugh Gaitskell, leader of the Labour Party during the 1950's and champion of that party's right wing. Jenkins quickly assumed a position of leadership, so that, when Labour won a majority in 1964, he easily gained an important Cabinet portfolio, that of home secretary. He subsequently was responsible not only for a major revamping of British law but also for an attempted reshaping of the Labour Party. Jenkins was central to the debate on Britain's integration into the European Community, and, as president of the European Commission, he strengthened that nascent organization, assisting notably in the creation of the European Monetary System. Under Thatcher, he played an unwitting role in the perpetuation of Conservative rule when he cofounded the centrist Social Democratic Party--which, allied with the Liberal Party, split the anti-Conservative vote, and which, after Jenkins's resignation, rapidly disintegrated. A substantial feast spiced by warm, vivid accounts of encounters with Johnson, Kennedy, Harold Wilson, and other lesser politicians, and by an insider's view of the hothouse world of Parliamentary politics. (Sixteen pages of b&w photographs--not seen.) -- Copyright ©1993, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.

From Publishers Weekly:

Lord Jenkins is a British politician at home equally in the chambers of power and the world of letters. A leading Labour figure for 35 years, serving as Home Secretary twice and Chancellor of the Exchequer, and only narrowly missing the premiership, he always seemed to be slightly out of step with much of his party; he was both more pragmatic and less doctrinaire. Eventually Jenkins became leader of the nascent Social Democratic party, which during the early 1980s looked capable of forming a viable third-party government in combination with the Liberals. It was not to be, and Jenkins, politically active only as a peer, is now Chancellor of Oxford University. The author of a number of political biographies, Jenkins produces polished prose that throws much light on puzzling passages in postwar British history--the careers of George Brown, Harold Wilson and David Owen, for instance. Jenkins also recounts his frequent visits to the U.S. and vivid meetings with LBJ, JFK and an appallingly frank and alarming J. Edgar Hoover. The book provides a greater sense of the cut and thrust at the upper levels of power--and of the astonishing impact of the British press--than do most political memoirs, though the length and detail may daunt readers. Still, this is the best book of its kind since Denis Healey's 1991 memoir, The Time of My Life . Photos not seen by PW.
Copyright 1993 Reed Business Information, Inc.

About this edition

• Publisher: Random House
• Publication date: 1993
• ISBN 10: 0679413111
• ISBN 13: 9780679413110
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 585