Grammar (Living Language Topic Books)

Teen & Young Adult

Jago, Michael

Education & Reference

Hodder Murray

With almost four decades of experience in the Civil Service, Robin Butler, Lord Butler of Brockwell, has been privy to a succession of parliamentary shake-ups and international policy crises. During his remarkable career, Butler served as Private Secretary to Edward Heath, Harold Wilson and Margaret Thatcher and as Cabinet Secretary under Thatcher, John Major and Tony Blair. He has been in some risky situations, such as his proximity, with Margaret Thatcher, to the 1984 IRA bombing in Brighton and, with John Major, to the mortar attack on Downing Street in February 1991. To the public, however, he is perhaps best known for his role as the chairman of the 2004 inquiry into Iraq's weapons of mass destruction. In this illuminating political biography, Michael Jago weaves a narrative around Robin Butler's distinguished career as a civil servant, measured against the changing background of British politics over the past forty years. Butler successfully preserved the traditions of the Civil Service - above all, political impartiality - while implementing far-reaching changes and more mobility between the service and the outside world. Jago's study of that pivotal role, undertaken while the paint is still fresh, makes this biography required reading for anyone interested in the dynamics at the heart of power.

Robin Butler: At the Heart of Power from Heath to Blair

Politics & Social Sciences

Politics & Government

Biteback

Attlee has been labelled the accidental Prime Minister, but, as this biography demonstrates, Labours longest-serving leader lacked neither ambition nor ability, and his partys landslide victory in 1945 was not merely due to a temporary wave of populism. Jago traces Attlees rise to power, including his role as Churchills wartime deputy, and shows how his relentless quest for a more egalitarian society inspired far-reaching reforms, not least the creation of the NHS.

Clement Attlee: The Inevitable Prime Minister

History

Europe

Biteback Publishing

Investigator, interrogator, agent runner: the perfect inspiration for the perfect spy. This first full-length biography traces the life of the remarkable John Bingham, the man behind John le Carré’s George Smiley. The heir to an Irish barony and a spirited young journalist, John Bingham joined MI5 in 1940, taking part in many of MI5’s greatest wartime missions – including Operation DOUBLE CROSS, which ensured the success of D-Day – and later spent decades running agents in Britain against the Communist target. His skills were legendary and he became a mentor to many a novice spy – including one David Cornwell, later le Carré. Bingham, too, was an innovative writer; he perfected the psychological thriller, marrying cold objectivity with an explanation of the darkest reaches of human behaviour. His early novels were applauded, but he struggled to match the fame of the man he had inspired. Drawing on Bingham’s published and unpublished writings, as well as interviews with his family, Michael Jago skilfully tells the riveting yet poignant tale of the man who was George Smiley.

The Man Who Was George Smiley: The Life of John Bingham

Biographies & Memoirs

Arts & Literature

"The greatest irony is that it was to George Smiley, modelled largely on Bingham, that le Carré owed his success."—London Review of Books
Following the film success of Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy John le Carré's hero George Smiley has come to be seen as the perfect spy. Le Carré revealed shortly before the Iraq War that the model for Smiley was the author and MI5 officer John Bingham, 7th Baron Clanmorris. Michael Jago's brilliant account of his life is not just the story of a great intriguer; it is also of a portrait of the emotions behind the darkest human behavior.

Shortlisted for Political Biography of the Year at The Paddy Power Political Book Awards 2015 Elected in a surprise landslide in 1945, Clement Attlee was the first ever Labour leader to command a majority government. At the helm for twenty years, he remains the longest-serving leader in the history of the Labour Party. When he was voted out in 1951, he left with Labour's highest share of the vote before or since. And yet today he is routinely described as 'the accidental Prime Minister'. A retiring man, overshadowed by the flamboyant Churchill during the Second World War, he is dimly remembered as a politician who, by good fortune, happened to lead the Labour Party at a time when Britain was disillusioned with Tory rule and ready for change. In Clement Attlee: The Inevitable Prime Minister, Michael Jago argues that nothing could be further from the truth. Raised in a haven of middle-class respectability, Attlee was appalled by the squalid living conditions endured by his near neighbours in London's East End. Seeing fi rst-hand how poverty and insecurity dogged lives, he nourished a powerful ambition to achieve power and create a more ega in 1935, Attlee was single-minded in pursuing his goals, and in just six years from 1945 his government introduced the most significant features of post-war Britain: the National Health Service, extensive nationalisation of essential industry, and the Welfare State that Britons now take for granted. A full-scale reassessment, Clement Attlee: The Inevitable Prime Minister traces the life of a middle-class lawyer's son who relentlessly pursued his ambition to lead a government that would implement far-reaching socialist reform and change forever the divisive class structure of twentieth-century Britain.

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Books by Jago, Michael

See the best price to sell, buy, or rent books by Jago, Michael. BookScouter helps to compare book prices from 25+ online bookstores and 30+ buyback vendors with a single search.

Grammar (Living Language Topic Books)

Robin Butler: At the Heart of Power from Heath to Blair

Clement Attlee: The Inevitable Prime Minister

The Man Who Was George Smiley: The Life of John Bingham

The Man Who Was George Smiley: The Life of John Bingham

Clement Attlee: The Inevitable Prime Minister