Edwina Curie writes...

Edwina Currie's endorsement of A Classless Society:

'Tremendous! His judgements on Blair and Major are brilliant. The conclusion, on the gap between the meritocratic instinct of both compared with the anti-establishment tone of the decade is masterly. The book deserves to become a classic.'

My thanks to Edwina for her kind words. And my thanks too to Choice magazine, for a review of A Classless Society together with the paperback reissues of Crisis? What Crisis? and Rejoice! Rejoice!: 'taken as a whole, this trilogy is about the most authoritative account of the late 20th century you are likely to get.'

Forthcoming books - part one

This autumn will see the publication by Aurum of the third (and very definitely final) volume in my series about the building of a new political and cultural consensus in Britain. A Classless Society: Britain in the 1990s covers the period of John Major's premiership and takes the story up to 2001 with the re-election of Tony Blair.

It's an interesting period, and a slightly difficult one to assess at so short a distance. There's a strong temptation to see it all in terms of today, but I've tried to resist that; there was a different atmosphere in the country at the time, and I think it does constitute a distinct era in its own right. Above all, it was a time when politics ran hard to keep up with cultural change.

To coincide with the new book, there will be paperback reprints of the first two volumes in the trilogy: Crisis? What Crisis? and Rejoice! Rejoice!

Sid Waddell

The sad death of Sid Waddell, probably the most entertaining sports commentator we've ever had, is inevitably marked by collections of his sayings, such as this list. Included there is the classic: 'His eyes are bulging like the belly of a hungry chaffinch.'

But I've never seen quoted anywhere (except in my own Rejoice! Rejoice!) my all-time favourite, so I thought I'd add it to the mix: 'There's only one word for that - quintessential!'

What a man. Without him, darts would never have become a serious television sport.

A hundred days later...

Today is the hundredth day since I started to write my book on the 1990s, the sequel to Crisis? What Crisis? and Rejoice! Rejoice!. And it currently stands at just over 105,000 words, which means that I'm five days ahead of schedule, since I aim to average a thousand words a day.

And that's good news, because back on day 25, I was four days behind schedule, with a daily average of just 852 words.

I'm not entirely sure it's healthy that I should know such things. But I keep an Excel spreadsheet, into which I enter the wordcount every day, and which then calculates daily and weekly averages. A touch Aspergian perhaps, but it does entertain me when I get to the end of a long night's writing, so I shall continue.

Obviously I don't want to spoil the ending for any potential readers, but I have to say that John Major's grip on power is looking very insecure at the moment.

So, farewell then, Lord Redken

In my memory of the great political war of the first half of the 1980s, the big figures in the Labour Party seem impressively diverse in character and background, if not in gender: Tony Benn, Michael Foot, Eric Heffer, Neil Kinnock, Peter Shore, Derek Hatton, Arthur Scargill, Len Murray, Denis Healey, Gerald Kaufman, Roy Hattersley, Moss Evans - to name just a dozen at random.

And then there was Ken Livingstone, the man who had a more enduring impact than any of them.

Often accused of being a relentless self-publicist, he used the media attention he generated in the GLC days to espouse what was sometimes dismissively known as identity politics. And, despite all the vitriol and venom directed at him, he changed Britain to an extent achieved by very few politicians.

This would be a different country had he not existed. For those who remember the days of the 'loony left' stories, there's something rather ironic in the sight of the Conservative Party advocating gay marriages. As there was about Carol Thatcher losing a BBC gig for using the word 'golliwog'.

In my book on the 1980s, Rejoice! Rejoice!, I cited Livingstone alongside Margaret Thatcher as the political victors of the decade. I still think that's about right: Thatcher won the economic battles, Livingstone won the social struggles.

I voted for Ken as my constituency MP when he was first elected to Parliament in 1987, and I voted for him when he stood as an Independent candidate in the first mayoralty election in 2000. I even voted for him again when he then rejoined the Labour Party.

And now he has announced that he won't contest any more elections, having been defeated by Boris Johnson in the London mayoral election.

I regret that he stood at all this time; it just didn't feel right or dignified. But I regret even more that there was no one else in whose favour he could stand down, and that there still isn't. He was the last leader of the left.

And he's also the last of that great cast from the early 1980s to leave the political stage. It feels like the ending of a personal, as well as a political, era.

Things slightly less bitter...

The promotion for my e-book Things Can Only Get Bitter continues apace. Yesterday evening I was on LBC talking about it with Iain Dale, which was very agreeable, and this morning there's a review in the Guardian by John Harris - author of the excellent The Last Party, one of the best books about the 1990s.

'Fascinating stuff,' says Mr Harris, 'Turner's text contains plenty of astute observations.' Well, he says some other things as well, but that'll be the main bit I quote.

He does add: 'The story demands a telling that is more expansive (as in Turner's book about the 1980s, Rejoice, Rejoice!) and more methodical.'

That'll be coming next year. For now, Things Can Only Get Bitter is a taster for the big book, and is still available for the price of a Sunday newspaper.

Norman St John Stevas

When you hear on the news that someone who used to be well known has died, a standard response is: Good Lord, I hadn't thought about him/her for years.

Curiously that wasn't the case last night when the death was announced of the generously named Norman St John Stevas, or Lord St John of Fawsley as he later styled himself. He had turned up in conversation only last week when I was talking with Giles Radice about the evolution of the parliamentary select committees - a system that had been launched by Stevas back when he was leader of the House.

That was a pretty impressive legacy for such a slight political figure. Because apart from that, he wasn't really to be taken too seriously. This is an extract from my book Rejoice! Rejoice! Britain in the 1980s:

Thatcher’s determination to get her own way, despite the reservations of so many of her senior colleagues, became ever more apparent as 1981 wore on. She started the year by sacking Norman St John-Stevas as leader of the House, much to the horror of the liberal establishment and at the risk of fuelling his own sense of martyrdom.

‘I argued in the cabinet for a human and compassionate Conservatism,’ he pleaded, though in truth her motivation was rooted not so much in ideology as in a desire to reduce the authority of Francis Pym, the most plausible leader of the wets; Thatcher removed Pym from the ministry of defence and, while keeping him in the cabinet, isolated him as leader of the House, with St John-Stevas simply discarded to make room. As the novelist Michael Dobbs, who worked closely with her, noted: ‘She was ruthless when she had to be – and often when she didn’t have to be as well.’

In a way that was to become characteristic of dismissed wets, St John-Stevas was a couple of months later to be found presenting Dizzy: A Man for All Seasons, a BBC2 programme about Benjamin Disraeli, the man who originated the concept of One Nation Conservatism, in what was presumably intended to be a coded signal about where Thatcher was going wrong. And, as was to become equally characteristic, Thatcher ignored him entirely.

A Classless Society

A comment by Tyrone Jenkins on a previous blog entry asks whether I intend to write a sequel to my previous books Crisis? What Crisis? and Rejoice! Rejoice!

And the answer is that I am indeed contracted to produce a third volume in the series, provisionally titled A Classless Society: Britain in the 1990s.

This will cover the period from Margaret Thatcher's dethronement in November 1990 through to the re-election of Tony Blair in June 2001. And it'll be the usual chaotic mix of high politics and low culture - though in this instance, the politics were a bit on the low side as well.

Like the previous two volumes, it will be published by Aurum Press, with the same editor - Sam Harrison - that I worked with on my Terry Nation book. It should appear next year, though I'm hoping there'll be an interim piece on the period available for download in March this year.

Books of the Year 2

From the Sunday Times, 28 November 2010, on the subject of Rejoice! Rejoice! Britain in the 1980s:

'Among a host of recent books on the 1980s, Turner's stands out as comfortably the most entertaining. From long-forgotten one-hit wonders to episodes of Hi-De-Hi!, from the antics of Ian Botham to the disasters of Heysel and Hillsborough, he gives us a panoramic portrait of a country caught beween old and new. The dominant figure is, of course, Margaret Thatcher, and Turner's political analysis is balanced and shrewd.'

Books of the Year

It's the time of year when the great and good get to nominate their books of the year in the more serious periodicals. Having never it on to any such list, I'm hugely excited by Dominic Sandbrook in the New Statesman, who names Tim Pears's Landed and Craig Brown's Lost Diaries, and adds:

'I also loved Alwyn Turner's splendid Rejoice! Rejoice! Britain in the 1980s, which not only re-creates the weird world of the Falklands war, the miners' strike, alternative comedy and the Filofax, but finds room for Mike Gatting, Zola Budd and To the Manor Born.'

Since I don't write for such august publications, I don't have the chance of reciprocation, but I would take the opportunity to say that Mr Sandbrook's State of Emergency is the only new book I've actually bought this year, which is as big a tribute as I can pay it. Normally I wait for books to turn up in charity shops, but I was keen to read his account of the Ted Heath years in Britain. And damn fine it is too.

Daily Mail

Roger Lewis's very generous review of Rejoice! Rejoice! has now been posted on the Daily Mail website. Looks very good.

St George's Day

This year I'm celebrating St George's Day with the help of a splendid review of Rejoice! Rejoice! by Roger Lewis in the Daily Mail. It's an 'entertaining, insightful and wide-ranging survey,' he writes. My thanks to him and to the Mail for the kind words and the splendid presentation.

Also today, my copies of the book turned up, and very fine it looks too. Should be in the shops next week.

Must Read

I've never been in the Must Read column of the Sunday Times before. So I'm dead pleased with today's paper:

New titles

April is the kindest month. Or rather, this April's pretty good, since I have two new books due to be published.

And so I've added new subsections to my website for each of them: Rejoice! Rejoice! Britain in the 1980s (Aurum Press), which is the sequel to Crisis? What Crisis?, and My Generation: The Glory Years of British Rock (V&A Publishing), which is the sequel to Halfway to Paradise. Both should be in the shops in the next couple of weeks or so, but - for anyone who really can't wait - bits of them are now available for online viewing.

More Rejoicing

It pretty much goes without saying, of course, that Dominic Sandbrook is a very fine social historian (Never Had It So Good, White Heat &c.), so I'm hugely flattered by his review in the Sunday Times of my forthcoming book, Rejoice! Rejoice!

Here's just a few words:

'Turner’s book on the 1970s was for my money the most enjoyable of the recent crop on that turbulent decade, and he is on equally entertaining form here. The tone is that of a wildly enthusiastic guide ­leading us on a breakneck tour through politics, sport and culture, bursting with weird nuggets of knowledge gleaned everywhere from semi-forgotten John ­Mortimer novels to Wham! singles, football matches and episodes of Doctor Who.'

Rejoice! Rejoice!

My deep thanks to the very insightful Victoria Segal of the ever-wonderful Mojo magazine for reviewing my forthcoming book Rejoice! Rejoice! Britain in the 1980s. It's a 'dazzling overview of a demonised decade' apparently, and worth four stars of anyone's money.

The book is scheduled for publication by Aurum Press in April.