Roy Jenkins – författare

Roy Jenkins follows up Churchill with a book of a very different shape; short and semi-autobiographical, but also full of the wit and erudition which make that book such a success. Each of the twelve cities are described with a mixture of architectural interest, topographical insight, and personal anecdote.Jenkins has three British cities: Cardiff, which was the metropolis of his Monmouthshire childhood, Birmingham which he represented in Parliament for 27 years, and Glasgow, which aroused in him an enthusiasm far transcending politics. Further afield there is Paris, Brussels, where he lived for four years as President of the European Commission; Bonn, and Berlin, surveyed from its pre-war splendour, through to its architectural resurgence of the 1990s, Naples and Barcelona. From Lord Jenkins's over a hundred visits to North America there emerge highly personal recollections of New York and a more objective view of the of Chicago. Dublin, so near to home and yet so distant, makes up the dozen.Twelve Cities is a fascinating and sparkling collection from one of our very finest writers

Jenkins, himself a great Chancellor, looks at the lives and careers of the nineteen men who were Chancellor of the Exchequer between Gladstone's last administration and that of Clement Attlee, immediately after the Second World War and provides a unique insight into their personalities, their social backgrounds and their effect on the country at the time.

Sir Charles Dilke was born in 1843 and died in 1911. His career is one of the mysteries and tragedies of nineteenth-century history.In the summer of 1885 he was the youngest man in the outgoing cabinet and Gladstone's most likely successor as leader of the Liberal Party. But his great expectations were shattered when in July 1885 Donald Crawford, a Liberal candidate, began divorce proceedings against his twenty-two-year-old wife, citing Dilke as co-respondent. There were two hearings, during the second of which Mrs Crawford made the most sensational allegations and in the end Dilke lost. He maintained his innocence to his dying day and despite his public disgrace there were many who believed him.First published in 1958, Dilke is a story with a climax as exciting as it is mysterious and which bears continuing relevance to the private lives of public figures.

First published in 1989, this diary provides the background to two vital issues: our relations with the European Community and the state of politics in Britain. Few people are better qualified to know how we arrived where we are than Roy Jenkins. During the period of this diary he was President of the European Commission. The diary provides a picture of the day-to-day life of the head of an international organization, of the conflicting pressures and grinding routine, of the importance of personal relationships with world leaders such as Helmut Schmidt, Valéry Giscard d'Estaing, James Callaghan, Margaret Thatcher, Willy Brandt, Jean Monnet and Jimmy Carter.In addition to the political chronicle we have frank and sometimes unguarded revelations about the author, his tastes and preoccupations, from which emerges a man more imbued with public passion, more eccentric and with a more varied private life than many readers may expect. His subtle perception of people is revealed in brilliant portraits of, for example, Schmidt, pessimistic, streaked with melancholy, indiscreet and yet notably constructive, and Giscard d'Estaing, highly intelligent but with pretentions that sometimes make him faintly ludicrous.For those concerned with the way the world is developing and the impact of a civilized and essentially private personality on public events, European Diary is compulsory reading.

First published in 1984, this is the first biography of Stanley Baldwin for more than ten years, although there had been four in the preceding decade. This is strange, for Baldwin has recently begun to swim back into fashion. In part this is a function of growing nostalgia for his period of power, the 1920s and 1930s. Still more, however, it is " because Mrs Thatcher's brand of Conservative leadership has made him an object of contrasting interest in a way that Harold Macmillan's or Edward Heath's never did. When a new exponent of an alternative style temporarily achieves notice, it is now frequently suggested that he might be a new Baldwin. This reappraisal is therefore appropriately timed. It is written by a skilled political biographer, from a non-Conservative, although not personally unsympathetic, standpoint.Baldwin was born in 1867, the son of a rich Worcestershire ironmaster, and educated at Harrow and Trinity College, Cambridge. He then worked in the family business for twenty years. Although the most self-conscious countryman amongst British Prime Ministers of the past hundred years or more, he was not a country squire and never owned more than a few acres of land. He did not enter the House of Commons until he was forty, and was not even a junior minister until the threshold of fifty. Less than six years later, in 1923, he became Prime Minister and dominated British politics for the next fifteen years - the only man of this century to hold the highest office three times.

In his time, Harry S. Truman was one of the most under-rated presidents of the twentieth century. Succeeding the charismatic Roosevelt, he was often seen as an uninspiring leader, a poor diplomat and a fumbling politician. He was the first man to authorise the use of nuclear weapons, and was in office at the time when the multiplicity of hopes which arose at the end of the Second World War were inevitably disappointed.Nothing could be further from Roy Jenkins' view of him. This is the first biography of Truman to be written by an author with anything approaching the subject's own range of political experience, and Roy Jenkins brings to this book a quality of appreciation of Truman's political skills which has not been seen before. It is also the first biography to be written by a British author, giving it a new objectivity on the international affairs which occupied so much of Truman's presidency and by which he must be judged.

Jenkins' account of the constitutional struggle between the Liberal government of the early twentieth century and the House of Lords. The battle started with the introduction of the People's Budget of 1909 and continued through two general elections until 1911 when the Lords accepted the Parliament bill.

In Portraits and Miniatures, Roy Jenkins brings his penetrating intelligence and elegant prose to subjects ranging from literature and political history to wine and croquet. Long experience in both Houses of Parliament and as President of the European Commission has given him unparalleled insight into political figures such as R. A. Butler, Aneurin Bevan, Konrad Adenauer, and de Gaulle. A varied selection of essays, Portraits and Miniatures is fascinating, witty, and endlessly entertaining.

From the admiralty to the miner's strike, from the Battle of Britain to eventual victory over Nazi Germany, Churchill oversaw some of the most important events the world has ever seen. Winning the Nobel Prize in Literature for his personal writing and cautioning against a powerful Soviet Russia in his later years in office, his larger-than-life and complex personality has continued to fascinate writers and historians.In this comprehensive biography, Roy Jenkins faithfully presents these events, while also managing to convey the contradictions and quirks in Churchill's character. Weaving together in-depth analysis and brilliant historical research, Jenkins has succeeded in crafting this magnificent one-volume account packed with insights that only a fellow politician can convey.Bringing to life the statesman, writer, speaker and leader, Churchill is packed with insights into one of the most important figures of the twentieth century.

Winner of the Whitbread Biography of the Year.William Gladstone was, with Tennyson, Newman, Dickens, Carlyle, and Darwin, one of the stars of nineteenth-century British life. He spent sixty-three of his eighty-nine years in the House of Commons and was prime minister four times, a unique accomplishment. From his critical role in the formation of the Liberal Party to his preoccupation with the cause of Irish Home Rule, he was a commanding politician and statesman nonpareil. But Gladstone the man was much more: a classical scholar, a wide-ranging author, a vociferous participant in all the great theological debates of the day, a voracious reader, and an avid walker who chopped down trees for recreation. He was also a man obsessed with the idea of his own sinfulness, prone to self-flagellation and persistent in the practice of accosting prostitutes on the street and attempting to persuade them of the errors of their ways.Gladstone, by historian and eminent politician Roy Jenkins, is a full and deep portrait of a complicated man, offering a sweeping picture of a tumultuous century in British history, and is also a brilliant example of the biographer's art.