Look, who's writing

Political memoirs almost always create a flutter and generate considerable interest.
Paul Vallely examines what makes people write these and what purpose do they serve

POOR old Gordon Brown is facing an onslaught from three different sets of memoirs, which have been released in recent days, by Cherie Blair, John Prescott and Lord Levy. All of them have unflattering things to say about the Prime Minister's personality and behaviour.

The Americans call it "legacy writing". It includes any memoir writing for recreational, family or therapeutic purposes and it certainly covers the self-serving, self-congratulatory style of many types of political writing.

Often the writer wants to produce an apologia, which will set right their place in history. Sometimes they are animated by a sense of having been wronged - as with Lord Levy, who feels hard-done-by, or Cherie Blair, who had grudges to air about Gordon Brown and various others.

Some writers just feel overshadowed - which perhaps explains why no fewer than 18 former members of Margaret Thatcher's cabinets published memoirs. The other reason that people write political memoirs is for the money.

Well, Cherie Blair reportedly got `A31m for hers - not quite the `A34.6m her husband landed for his. Tony Blair had been hoping for `A37m from the auction for his book, which was conducted by the US lawyer Bob Barnett, who secured big advances in America for the memoirs of Bill Clinton and Alan Greenspan. But it became clear that the market had fallen; some even blamed Ms Blair's deal, with industry pundits wondering whether her revelations might take the sting out of his.

His yet-unwritten book was eventually bought by Random House whose chief executive Gail Rebuck is married to Blair's former pollster, Philip Gould. On securing the deal, she said: "He was an extraordinary prime minister, and this will be an extraordinary book".

Three kinds of books sell, according to Joel Rickett at The Bookseller. The first are books by prime ministers. Baroness Thatcher's Downing Street Years sold a massive 500,000 copies and even dull John Major sold 200,000 in hardback. Tony Blair can expect to sell somewhere between the two, industry analysts predict, though he might do better abroad than even Ms T.

The second set of sellers are books which are published very speedily after the event: the heavily censored diaries of Blair's spin doctor, Alastair Campbell, sold 70,000 copies in less than two months and the spit-and-tell memoirs of the former Washington ambassador Sir Christopher Meyer sold well. But books by other Blair ministers, including Robin Cook and Clare Short, all disappointed. And David Blunkett's - which got a `A3400,000 advance - flopped, selling a measly 4,000 copies.

The third set that sell well are individuals with a hinterland outside Westminster. The Speaker Betty Boothroyd sold 106,000. The plain-speaking Mo Mowlam sold 40,000. Tony Benn has sold solidly with the eight volumes of his diaries. The waspish Thatcherite diarist Alan Clark appealed to a wider public as a party disloyalist as well as a rou`E9 - and diaries often sell better than memoirs because they have the freshness and candour of instant history written by people who do not know the ending rather than the reworking of hindsight.

Newspapers buy up political memoirs to serialise them. The current going rate is between `A350,000 and `A3200,000, considerably down on previous eras. Publishers aim to recoup from these lucrative serialisations between 50 and 100 per cent of the advance they pay the author. If the author does not deliver the dirt as promised, the inkies renegotiate the fee.

Serialisations can be a two-edged sword. David Blunkett's eagerly awaited diaries were so exhaustively extracted that many people felt there was no need to buy the book because they had read the best portions.

Most are exercises in self-justification. Some, like Alastair Campbell's, pull all their best punches. Others deliberately rewrite history. Cherie Blair's claims that the reason Tony didn't stand down at one point as he promised Gordon Brown was because he was afraid Brown would abandon his health and education reforms on foundation hospitals and city academies.

Insiders know that is untrue. Blair had thought the game was up and that the Hutton or Butler reports would point the finger at him. When they didn't, beyond a few imprecations about sofa government, he told Gordon Brown that he couldn't step down now because if he did everyone would assume that he was guilty after all.

With a beady eye. Anything which makes the reader say: "He would say that, wouldn't he?" can be discounted or ignored. Anything which doesn't reveal the author in the best possible light is probably true. Caveat emptor.

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