Irving Wardle
They Laughed, They Cried
My Old Man: A Personal History of Music Hall
By John Major
HarperPress 365pp £20 order from our bookshop
During John Major’s years as prime minister it always seemed to me that he and the opposition leader had swapped roles. The nimbly legalistic Blair, oozing snake-oil salesman’s charm, was surely a predestined Tory, while Major, with his man-of-the-people credentials and honestly prosaic platform manner, was clearly a missing link in the Labour tradition of Attlee and Keir Hardie.
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