Tony blair autobiography book
A Journey
In 1997, Tony Blair won the biggest Labour victory in history to sweep the party to power and end eighteen years of Conservative government. He remains the only living Labour leader to have won a general election.
He has been one of the most dynamic leaders of modern times; few British prime ministers have shaped the nation's course as profoundly as Blair during his ten years in power, and his achievements and his legacy will be debated for years to come.
His memoirs reveal in intimate detail this unique political and personal journey, providing an insight into the man, the politician and the statesman, and charting successes, controversies and disappointments with an extraordinary candour.
A Journey will prove essential and compulsive reading for anyone who wants to understand the complexities of our global world. As an account of the nature and uses of power, it will also have a readership that extends well beyond politics, to all those who want to understand the challenges of leadership today.
A Journey
Book by Tony Blair
For the album by Maciek Pysz, see A Journey (album). For the 2024 Philippine film, see A Journey (film).
A Journey is a memoir by Tony Blair of his tenure as Prime Minister of the United Kingdom. Published in the UK on 1 September 2010, it covers events from when he became leader of the Labour Party in 1994 and transformed it into "New Labour", holding power for a party record three successive terms, to his resignation and replacement as prime minister by his Chancellor of the Exchequer, Gordon Brown. Blair donated his £4.6-million advance, and all subsequent royalties, to the British Armed Forces charity the Royal British Legion. It became the fastest-selling autobiography of all time at the bookstore chain Waterstones. Promotional events were marked by anti-war protests.
Two of the book's major topics are the strains in Blair's relationship with Brown after Blair allegedly reneged on the pair's 1994 agreement to step down as prime minister much earlier, and his controversial decision to participate in the 2003 invasion of Iraq. Blair discusses Labour's future following the 2010 general election, his relations with the Royal Family, and how he came to respect President of the United StatesGeorge W. Bush. Reviews were mixed; some criticised Blair's writing style, but others called it candid.
Gordon Brown was reportedly unhappy over Blair's comments about him, while David Runciman of the London Review of Books suggested there were episodes from Blair's troubled relationship with his Chancellor that were absent from A Journey. Labour politician Alistair Darling said the book demonstrates how the country can be changed for the better when a government has a clear purpose, while the New Zealand Listener suggested Blair and his contemporaries had helped to write New Labour's epitaph. Some families of servicemen and women who were killed in Iraq reacted angrily, with one antiwar commentator dismissing Blair's regrets over Tony Blair is a politician who defines our times. His emergence as Labour Party leader in 1994 marked a seismic shift in British politics. Within a few short years, he had transformed his party and rallied the country behind him, becoming prime minister in 1997 with the biggest victory in Labour’s history, and bringing to an end eighteen years of Conservative government. He took Labour to a historic three terms in office as Britain’s dominant political figure of the last two decades. Written in a congenial style peppered with slang and gossipy asides. At one moment he is the bloke in the pub. The next, he is Churchill This is a more honest political memoir than most and more open in many respects than I had anticipated. He is compellingly candid about how scared he was when he first became prime minister . . . He is unusually direct about his calculations, even when they don't reflect well on him . . . He admits to stretching the truth beyond `breaking point' to secure a settlement in Northern Ireland. Even when the lies are told in a noble cause, few politicians are honest enough to admit that they sometimes feel compelled to be deceivers He is by turns outspoken, provocative, unrepentant, often serious, sometimes funny Tony Blair's memoir is part psychodrama, part treatise on the frustrations of leadership in a modern democracy . . . The book's broader purpose is to preserve his legacy, settling scores, justifying the war against Iraq, and mounting a defiant plea to his party to keep faith with New Labour . . . Blair comes across as likable, if manipulative; capable of dissembling while wonderfully fluent; in short, a brilliant modern politician Will certainly become a bestseller This is substantial, thoughtful book and on the whole well written . . . My judgment is that he has for the most part set down honestly his version of events and attempted seriously to engage with his critics The fascination of the British public with Tony Blair is almost on the scale of his fascination with his own relationship to them Really rather splendid Prime Ministerial memoirs are traditionally stuffy, formal and guarded, as though written under police caution. Tony Blair's are nothing of the sort . . . his memoirs are chummy, colloquial, impulsive and rash . . . it is this candour that makes the book so readable As this book immodestly reveals, Tony Blair was, and remains, a remarkable influence on politics, A Journey: My Political Life
A Journey is Tony Blair’s firsthand account of his years in office and beyond. Here he describes for the first time his role in shaping our recent history, from the aftermath of Princess Diana’s death to the war on terror. He reveals the leadership decisions that were necessary to reinvent his party, the relationships with colleagues including Gordon Brown, the grueling negotiations for peace in Northern Ireland, the implementation of the biggest reforms to public services in Britain since 1945, and his relationships with leaders on the world stage—Nelson Mandela, Bill Clinton, Vladimir Putin, George W. Bush. He analyzes the belief in ethical intervention that led to his decisions to go to war in Kosovo, Sierra Leone, Afghanistan, and, most controversially of all, in Iraq.
A Journey is a book about the nature and uses of political power. In frank, unflinching, often wry detail, Tony Blair charts the ups and downs of his career to provide insight into the man as well as the politician and statesman. He explores the challenges of leadership, and the ramifications of standing up, clearly and forcefully, for what one believes in. He also looks ahead, to emerging power relationships and economies, addressing the vital issues and complexities of our global world.
Few British prime ministers have shaped the nation’s course as profoundly as Tony Blair, and his achievements and his legacy will be debated for years to come. Here, uniquely, we have hi