Events | 2010.03.05
Blair invites readers on a journey … again
Former prime minister\'s memoir out in September, with industry insiders expecting £25 book to fly off shelves
There have been so many journeys. The Journey was the title chosen in 2004 by diva Donna Summer to best describe a collection of her disco classics. Also a 1959 Hollywood potboiler starring Deborah Kerr and Yul Brynner about the Soviet occupation of Hungary. Even now, it is the title under which the US self-help guru Brandon Bays offers "cutting-edge transformation and healing work".
And so Tony Blair should not have been surprised when politicians and publishers stood underwhelmed by his decision to call his memoir, the book that sparked the biggest political bidding war in British political history, The Journey. Where is the gravitas, asked some, perusing the celebrity tell-all cover picture of a half smiling Blair, dressed in a black jacket with an opened necked shirt?
What does this tell us about him, asked the New Statesman; especially when set against accounts produced by other former prime ministers: Harold Wilson – The Making of A Prime Minister. Margaret Thatcher – The Downing Street Years?
Still, the book, which was written by Blair himself rather than a ghostwriter and is scheduled for publication in September, has already earned him a colossal advance, said to be around £5m.
It will go on sale simultaneously in the UK — where it will sell for £25 — the US and Canada, and with huge sales anticipated in all those territories, Blair is expected to garner significant royalty earnings. Translation rights have been sold to 12 territories. Blair will also create an audio version and publishers Random House will make an e-book available. He will then embark on an international publicity tour.
But what will he say? Few clear pointers from the man yesterday. "I have tried to write a book which describes the human as much as the political dimensions of life as prime minister. Though necessarily retrospective, it is an attempt to inform and shape current and future thinking as much as an historical account of the past. Most of all I want readers to have as much pleasure reading it as I had writing it."
As expected, the description provided by his publisher, Gail Rebuck, was more effusive. The chief executive of Random House, is married to Lord Gould, pollster of choice throughout Blair\'s reign over Labour and at No 10.
"Tony Blair\'s The Journey will break new ground in prime ministerial memoirs just as Blair himself broke the mould of British politics," said Rebuck. "His book is frank, open, revealing and written in an intimate and accessible style. As an account of the nature and uses of power, it will have a readership that extends well beyond politics."
According to Sonny Mehta, his US publisher, the anticipation is just as great over there. "Tony Blair is an extremely popular figure in North America. His memoir is refreshing, both for its candour and vivid portrayal of political life," he said yesterday. "We all knew Blair was an extraordinary statesman and gifted thinker. We can now add exceptional writer to that list."
These blurbs do nothing to address the appetite to find out just how much detail Blair chooses to share about the Iraq war, his relationship with George Bush, his dealmaking in Northern Ireland, the intervention in Kosovo, his battles with Saddam – or his battles with Gordon.
Still, commercially, he will be pushing at an open door. "This is a book that people have been anticipating since the moment Tony Blair left office, and should be the bestselling political memoir since Margaret Thatcher\'s," said Andrew Lake, the politics buyer for Waterstones.
It is astonishing that Blair found time to write the book at all. Since leaving office he surged ahead to a role as the envoy in the Middle East for the UN, the EU and Russia. In 2008, Blair launched his Faith Foundation. The following year, it was the Faith and Globalisation Initiative, launched with Yale University. There have been advisory roles and event appearances in Paris and Singapore and the US, a period that has led to speculation that he has made about £10m since leaving office.
For all that, there was an accord between Blair and Brown which ruled out the book\'s publishing before the next election. And with that in mind, is Gordon looking forward to it, reporters asked No10 yesterday? "He hasn\'t specifically mentioned that book, but I know he has a wide-ranging interest in books," replied the prime minister\'s spokesman. Even tomes with dodgy titles.
For more information, please visit
http://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/2010/mar/04/tony-blair-memoirs-books
