Diary of an MP's Wife: Inside and Outside Power: 'riotously candid' Sunday Times

Product Information

Someone who I’ve met and whose general reputation is for total charmlessness, was surprisingly (to me) described as “charming” – presumably for being nice to her. As the daughter of former defence secretary Sir John Nott, the author knows her own way round Whitehall, and her instincts are razor sharp; she is scathing from the off about “seven-year-old Gavin Williamson”, at the time just an eager young prime ministerial bag-carrier, and has Keir Starmer pegged as a potential Labour leader almost from the moment he enters parliament. I bought this book cheap, intending to skim read interesting bits, but ended up reading it cover-to-cover. The struggles of ordinary people are ignored in a life of champagne, weekends at Chequers, long holidays in Cornwall and Devon, and afternoons gossiping over high tea and cake.

Because of the author’s position as a confidante of the main players, this book will be a primary source for future political and social historians. Dip Into NEW PAPERBACKS [jsb_filter_by_tags count="15" show_more="10" sort_by="total_products"/] A selection of recent paperbacks. Under Cameron, he held middle-ranking jobs at the Northern Ireland Office and the Foreign Office, before being unceremoniously fired by Theresa May. My belief is that Mrs Thatcher, furious at the fact Nott’s proposed Naval cuts may have encouraged the Argentines to invade, refused his resignation and made him stay on as Defence Secretary throughout the Falklands War as a sort of punishment. Overall, I revelled in this expose of privilege and politics (who knew quite so many shooting weekends still took place?On a visit to stay with the then chancellor George Osborne, at his “moderately large” grace-and-favour mansion, the 21-room Dorneywood, her Notting Hill sensibilities are even offended by the outré pink tiles in her suite. Nothing about 14 million children in poverty, hospital waiting lists rising, education suffering (except for hose who went to Eton or Cheltenham like the diarist and her chums), or the emergence of a underclass in low paid, vulnerable jobs. The court of King David, to which Sasha and her Etonian MP husband, Sir Hugo, belonged during Cameron’s Downing Street years, was nothing if not homogeneous. We have come a long way, thankfully, since the days of political wives being expected to stand mutely by their man. Swire and her pals carried on enjoying their lives and their parties untouched by the inequities imposed on the rest of us.

After all, this is the same Dave who on another now-infamous occasion blamed pheromones for wanting to drag her into nearby bushes to “give her one”. There was a lot of publicity, and many extracts available in the national press for this humdinger of a political tell-tale “diary”.See our Remarkables Archive list for what is no longer in print, but which we are happy to track down.

But if the first half of the book is a giddy romp through life under the “chumocracy”, the second is more bittersweet, chronicling the fracturing of old friendships post-Brexit in what has become a court exiled from power. Sasha Swire was raised and educated in west Cornwall, where her father, Sir John Nott, was MP for the St Ives constituency. Yet, enraging as some will find it, this is the culture that governed Britain for most of the last decade, and there are few more gallopingly readable accounts of the strengths and weaknesses that led us to the present day. A professional partner and loyal spouse, Swire has strong political opinions herself - sometimes more 'No, Minister' than 'Yes'. The author clearly was part of David Cameron’s inner circle and completely in the confidence of her husband throughout his years as an MP and junior minister.

There is an acute political intelligence at work, of the sort that makes one wonder what might have been had Swire not settled for experiencing politics vicariously through her husband. But what these diaries do reveal in all it's vainglory is the great lie at the heart of Cameron's austerity: "We are all in this together. Remarkables REMARKABLES Intriguing, stunning, or otherwise remarkable books These include fine editions, foreign publications exceptional for their interest or production, special editions and some first-rate books from very small publishers.