I wonder what discussions Mandelson had with his publishers before coming up with the title for his autobiography The Third Man. It is taken, of course, from Graham Greene's story and today Boyd Tonkin writing in The Independent said that he wasn't sure why the politician...
"chooses on the cover of his testimony to recall a film and novella dominated by a shadowy crook who makes little children die in agony thanks to his trade in toxic remedies."And ends up in a sewer...
Here's my pick of political autobiography titles (and inclusion has absolutely nothing to do with the views expressed within...).
1) Free Radical by Vince Cable (Always like witty, pithy puns but time has a way of putting a new twist on them...)
2) Climbing the Bookshelves by Shirley Williams
3) I'm Not the Only One George Galloway borrowing a line from John Lennon's Imagine.
4) Mr Galloway goes to Washington - I haven't looked it up but I presume that's from the 30s Gary Cooper film Mr Dee Goes to Washington. Saw it on TV as a child - the little guy taking the big guys on and winning...lip trembling, heart thumping stuff...
5) Choose your Weapons...what a brave spit-in-your-eye challenge ...disappointed to find it isn't Douglas Hurd's autobiography, but the title of his history of 200 years of British foreign secretaries. He called his autobiography Memoirs. That's not really trying...
6) Let the People Decide by left wing Labour MP by Dennis Canavan
7) In My Own Time by Jeremy Thorpe because it doesn't even hint at the Liberal leader's scandal ridden secret life....
Did Charlie Haughey, the former Irish taoiseach, ever write his autobiography?
Haven'been able to find one but I've discovered that Aongus Collins has written his cartoon biography. The respected historian T. Ryle Dwyer has written the biography of two taoiseachs: Jack Lynch and Charlie. Jack's is called Nice Fellow and Charlie's...Short Fellow. Ouch!
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