"An eminently readable and impressively detailed account of a political career in New Labour, from an illustrious insider."
Jeff Hoon served as a Cabinet Minister for ten years in the Governments of Tony Blair and Gordon Brown, holding office as Defence Secretary during British Military Operations in Sierra Leone, Afghanistan and Iraq, as Leader of the House, Secretary of State for Transport, Government Chief Whip and two terms as Minister for Europe. For eighteen years he was also the Member of Ashfield and represented Derbyshire in the European Parliament for ten years.
In See How They Run, he gives a fulsome, and refreshingly frank account of his rise from a railway family in Long Eaton near Derby (his Dad expected him to have a career as a railwayman) through knocking on doors for the Labour Party to holding high political office, and in so doing he reveals himself to be a hard working, career politician driven by an innate sense of morality and justice.
That his achievements were born from inauspicious academic beginnings - Hoon describes struggling academically until he realised that doing his homework properly would make a huge difference - make his rise all the more impressive and very human.
What makes this memoir different is that Hoon has a touching and endearing ability to place the reader “in the room" during moments of high political drama with the same clarity with which he describes seeing Parliament through a bus window being as a junior school pupil and or his poignant recollection of a near neighbour who had been captured by the Japanese in WWII and worked on the Burma railway.
If political memoirs are not your usual reading fare, this excellent book should change your mind, as part real-life thriller, part heart-warming account of one man’s career, it is beautifully written and goes a long way to restoring a sense of faith and gratitude for those who seek and assume the burdens and responsibilities of public office.
| Primary Genre | Biographies & Autobiographies |
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