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Tony Blair hopes to silence 'cheeky' author who mocked him in The Ghost
Former prime minister wrote memoirs himself, disproving central theme of Robert Harris novel
Tony Blair said Robert Harris was cheeky for portraying him as a lightweight in his novel, The Ghost . Photograph: Linda Nylind
Tony Blair no doubt hopes that his memoirs will silence one foe.
The former prime minister let it be known that Robert Harris was a "cheeky fuck" for portraying him as a lightweight in his novel, The Ghost.
Now Blair has disproved the main element in the Harris novel: that he is so superficial he needs a ghostwriter to draft his memoirs.
It is apparent from reading A Journey that Blair is telling the truth when he says he penned the book in longhand by himself. There are clunky phrases which bear the hallmarks of a law, rather than an English, graduate.
Take this sentence on Gordon Brown:
Just as during the time when Gordon sheltered beneath my umbrella as prime minister the benign view of him was misguided in his favour, so now it is misguided to underestimate his huge strengths.
It is only when Blair speaks, in his BBC interview with Andrew Marr tonight, that his thinking becomes clear on this point:
When he was my number two – you know the chancellor to my prime minister – people maybe over-estimated his capacity to be prime minister. I think the last three years when he was prime minister, people maybe under-estimated his strengths.
Harris will probably have a chuckle as he assesses Blair's efforts as a writer. Harris, who admired Blair in his early years as Labour leader, has never forgiven him for the way in which he sacked his old friend Peter Mandelson in 2001. At one point Harris wrote that the treatment of Mandelson had the whiff of the Dreyfus affair.
Harris decided the best punishment for Blair was to mock him. His novel and subsequent film, in which Pierce Brosnan plays the Blair character, is about a former British prime minister (Adam Lang) who plans to make millions from his memoirs.
As a lightweight, Lang does not really believe anything. And so his publishers hire a young ghostwriter who knows nothing about politics and usually pens memoirs on behalf of footballers.
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User Comments
Koolio
1 September 2010 2:27PM
It's a pity that The Journey will probably stand as the only document from Blair that wasn't "sexed up" by Al Campbell.
Oldy
1 September 2010 5:57PM
Now then; which of these two Blair or Harris is the most credible?
If their credence is measured by book readers and sales I would think that Harris wins by an astronomical distance.
I know who I would rather believe!
fibmac70
2 September 2010 10:20AM
Tony Blair hopes to silence 'cheeky' author who mocked him in The Ghost
Well, let's hope he can make good this proud boast
But clock Blair's eyes. They look as if they've seen a 'Ghost'.....
WattaPalaver
1 September 2010 2:25PM
Unless, of course, Blair employed one of his personal staff to ghost write it, unbeknownst to his publishers. The the man himself could have carried on globetrotting earning millions from his public speaking engagements, whilst the law graduate intern would have produced the clunky, inelegant phrases mentioned.
Actually, I would have hoped that an alumnus of educational establishments such as Fettes and St John's College Oxford could produce rather better prose than that quoted. A blot on the escutcheon of privileged education, if he did write it himself.