In a publishing season of big books, this must be the biggest. Nigel Lawson learned his trade as one of the 'teenage scribblers', whom he later disparaged, on the Financial Times. 'The length that comes most naturally to me is, not surprisingly, that of a rather long newspaper article,' he observes. His old skill in knocking out a story in a series of effective paragraphs has not deserted him, but here he has joined them up, story by story, each with its own sub-head, into no fewer than 81 chapters, not to mention fifty pages of annexes. The reason is evident. Since his resignation as Chancellor of the Exchequer in October 1989, he has been left with a double burden: not only time hanging heavy on his hands but a mission to explain and to justify weighing equally heavy on his mind. And a good mind it is too. There is an impressive sense of intellectual engagement in this account which carries the flagging reader along, with incisive passages of real penetration redeeming the dense thickets of involuted detail in which we sometimes become trapped.

LRB 28 January 1993 | PDF Download