The previously alluded to output of diaries with regards to the Wilson era tends to lay the stress on the day to day battles that ministers engaged in over economic issues; as a result the liberalisation of Britain that occurred under Wilson has been overlooked in many accounts of his governments. Wilson was born in 1916, and the book follows him from his childhood in the north of England to his academic success at Oxford, his war years as a civil servant at the National Coal Board, into parliament and up through the ranks to Downing Street. Wilson was a British politician who was Prime Minister of the United Kingdom twice, from October 1964 to June 1970, and again from March 1974 to April 1976. We don’t share your credit card details with third-party sellers, and we don’t sell your information to others.

That said, the impact of the devaluation crisis undoubtedly hamstrung the rest of Labour’s spell in power in the 1960s. Incidentally, Wilson himself publicly claimed (Liverpool Daily Post, December 17, 1981) that he had recently drafted, and was putting the finishing touches on, the first 50,000 words of his autobiography. He lost, but in 1963, after Gaitskell’s death, Wilson took the leadership, and a year later led Labour to victory. But, at least by the 1970s, both East and West envisioned a conventional phase in their war planning. Inscribed by Wilson to the title page: "For Richard Dalby Harold Wilson", the recipient being the notable bibliophile of that name, and, as with many books from Dalby's library, this one comes with some bonus ephemera tucked into the rear of the book, in this case several leaflets on the subject of the 1974 referendum on Britain's future relationship with Europe, as well as a number of press cuttings.This was a sentiment that Wilson expressed publicly pre-1986 (in his 1976 televised interviews with David Frost), but not frequently—and so its appearance in the memoirs underscores the latter’s now-confirmed bona fides. Analyzes the developing role of the Prime Minister's office from Walpole to the present day, and gives a unique insight into the shifts of political power within and beyond government, the workings of the Cabinet, and the office of Prime Minister. The other comparison I’d make with the other books is that, in common with these and many other studies of UK government in the 1960s and 1970s, the Thomas-Symonds account largely takes for granted the validity of the premises on which UK economic policy operated, even though modern economic analysis largely eschews those premises.

But – a fact that Thomas-Symonds does not disguise – the reputation for untrustworthiness that Wilson had acquired on his way to the top meant that friends and critics alike examined his every action for evidence of duplicity.

His avowed intent is to persuade us to think of Wilson not just as a sharp politician in a Gannex raincoat, but also as a leader who shaped 20th-century Britain. Thomas-Symonds’ clear admiration for Wilson – for his path through the acrimonious Bevanite/Gaitskellite clashes of the 1950s and for his ability to manage and be in touch with the party (Wilson’s instincts, Thomas-Symonds takes the trouble to cite Michael Foot as noting, were “those of the party rank and file”) – would suggest he at least views himself as decidedly of the (soft) left.

The Road to Recovery: Fabian Society lectures given in the autumn of 1947 by Douglas Jay, Geoffrey Bing, H.Wilson’s hawkishness over the issue ‘plunged the government into a prolonged and needless crisis that turned into arguably one of the most serious in the Labour Party’s history’ (p. In this powerful new portrait, drawing on previously unavailable sources and first-hand parliamentary insight, acclaimed biographer Nick Thomas-Symonds reveals a more complex figure. Yet the need to support the pound displaced all serious attempts to restructure the economy, while the rate of inflation quickened and strikes undermined efforts to slow the rate of pay increases. In a notorious broadcast, Wilson appeared to suggest this made no difference to the ‘pound in your pocket’.

Arguably Wilson’s greatest foreign policy achievement was managing to keep British troops out of Vietnam. p. 294: The membership of Wilson’s inner cabinet as given here may have one or two dates or names transposed. This year marks the centenary of Harold Wilson’s birth, the fiftieth anniversary of his most impressive general election victory and forty years since his dramatic resignation as Prime Minister. But a flexible interpretation of policies and promises has never excluded a prime minister from the pantheon of great politicians. A fascinating history of British politics and its governance from the perspective of the former Prime Minister.

Jeremy Nuttall notes that if we take a more long duree view, then a different picture of the Wilson era emerges: from a ‘long historical view, the most significant and distinctive feature seems less the fluctuating economic crises and policies, the desperate attempts to secure growth, stabilise the pound, or increase real wages … and more the underlying social, educational, and moral changes of the time’ (p. Third, to those making the program, and perhaps some of the viewership, the program provided a clear inkling of Wilson’s diminished command of reality.