Roy Jenkins: A Retrospective

Roy Jenkins was a dominating figure in British politics across the four decades before his death in 2003, with an impact and legacy greater than many prime ministers of the period. His name is synonymous with the rise of the liberal society in the 1960s and beyond, and with the development of progressive social democratic politics spanning the forty years between the death of his mentor Hugh Gaitskell and the premiership of his friend - and some would say protege - Tony Blair. These essays, by friends and associates of Roy Jenkins from every phase of his life, chart his remarkable career with insight, anecdote and empathy. Each contributor writes from a close relationship with their subject, and with unique authority. They bring to life the 1960s 'Iron Chancellor'; the model progressive Home Secretary under Wilson and Callaghan; the first (and only) British President of the European Commission; the pioneer of the Social Democratic Party and much of the reshaping of British politics in the 1980s and 1990s; the friend and mentor of Tony Blair; the Chancellor of Oxford University; and the acclaimed author and biographer, whose best-selling Churchill appeared more than fifty years after his first biography of Clement Attlee. The authors also recreate the remarkable circle of partisans and devotees, from politics and beyond, which surrounded Roy Jenkins from the mid-1960s until his death. At the heart of the Establishment, yet among its most effective reformers and critics; a son of the valleys who became a connoisseur of the best things in life, he was an object of the deepest loyalty and the fiercest antipathy - and among the most caricatured and celebrated figures of the day. This book is a testament to one of the most fascinating public figures of the post-war era.

Table of Contents:
Preface; 1. Youth; 2. Balliol; 3. Bletchley; 4. Backbencher; 5. Birmingham; 6. A Young Home Secretary; 7. Chancellor; 8. The Welsh Wrecker; 9. The Home Office Again; 10. A Life in Caricature; 11. President of the European Commission; 12. The European Achievement; 13. SDP; 14. Glasgow; 15. Back and Forth to the United States; 16. Oxford's Chancellor; 17. Writer and Biographer; 18. A Late Friendship; 19. A Biographer's Tale

About the Author :
Andrew Adonis is special adviser to Tony Blair (since 1998) and was Head of the Downing Street Policy Unit, 2001-3. An Oxford history graduate, he was from 1988 to 1998 successively Fellow in Politics at Nuffield College, Oxford, Public Policy Editor of the Financial Times, and a columnist and leader-writer on the Observer. His books include studies of the Victorian aristocracy, the rise and fall of the poll tax, the English class system, and the development of modern British government and politics. His biography of Roy Jenkins is forthcoming. Keith Thomas, like Roy Jenkins, was educated at South Wales grammar school (Barry) and at Balliol College, Oxford. He is an Oxford historian who was a college tutor at St John's and, later, President of Corpus Christi. In 2001 he returned to All Souls College, where he was a Fellow in the 1950s. He has been President of the British Academy (1993-7), a Trustee of the British Museum (since 1999). His writings on social and cultural history include Religion and the Decline of Magic (1971) and Man and the Natural World (1983).

Review :
'Roy Jenkins was such a multi-faceted and multi-talented character that it was really a rather brilliant idea to publish a series of essays by people who knew him really well (in each compartment of his extraordinary life)'