Book Review: Commonwealth of Nations: The Making of the Prime Minister
| DOI | 10.1177/002070206502000424 |
| Date | 01 December 1965 |
| Published date | 01 December 1965 |
| Subject Matter | Book Review |
552
INTERNATIONAL
JOURNAL
apparent
contradiction
between
Johnson's
foreign
and
domestic
policy
which
is
rather
like
Hubert
Humphrey
at
home,
and
Barry
Goldwater
abroad.
The
central
problem
with the
book
is
that
White
is
too
uncritical
of
the
personalities
which
dominate
his
book.
That
is
a
serious
weak-
ness,
for
his
version
of
politics
is
really
that
of
the
struggle
of
per-
sonalities.
As
I. F.
Stone
has
remarked,
White
has
become
the
poet
laureate
of
American
presidential
elections.
"The
occupational
hazard
of
'poets
laureate,"
he
adds,
"...
is
a
declining
ratio
of
flattery
to
poetry."
University
of
Toronto
RAMSAY
COOK
Commonwealth
of
Nations
THE
MAKING
OF
THE
PRIME
MINISTER.
By
Anthony Howard
and
Richard
West.
1965.
(London:
Jonathan
Cape.
Toronto:
Clarke,
Irwin.
239pp.
$6.00)
While
their title
proclaims
a
British
parallel
to
Theodore
White's
The
Making
of
the
President,
the
two
journalist-authors
of
The
Making
of
the
Prime
Minister
have
written
a
book
in
which
the
British
element
is
more evident
than
the parallel.
Partly,
as
the
authors
state,
this
results from the
difference
between American
and British
politics.
It
may
also
be
a
consequence
of
a
difference
between American
and
British journalism,
or
between
styles
of
the
particular
journalists.
Howard
and
West
are
undoubtedly
able
and
well-informed,
but
they
share
in
the
currently
popular
British
newspaper
desire
to
convey
the
insiders' political
world
in
awesome
detail.
Some
of
the
detail
is
con-
sequential.
For
example,
it's worth
knowing
about
Harold
Wilson's
con-
stituency
activities
or
about
the
painful
process
of
putting together
Sir
Alec
Douglas-Home's
election
telecast.
But
it
seems
gratuitous
to
be
told
that
the
news
of
Prime
Minister
Macmillan's
hospitalization
reached
certain
cabinet
ministers
just
as
they
were
served
their
fish
course
during a
party
dinner,
or
that
Harold
Wilson
occupied
room
115 in
Moscow's
National
Hotel.
However
annoying
the
prideful
recitation
of
personal
detail,
the
book
remains
an
interesting
account
of
how
both
Wilson
and
Home
became
party
leaders and
of
how Wilson
succeeded Home
as
prime
minister
by
virtue
of
the
general
election
of
1964.
The
latter
lends
itself
less
well
to
the authors'
treatment
than
do
the
leadership
suc-
cession
struggles
within
each
party.
These
struggles,
unlike
the
election
campaign
itself,
can
be
told
only
as
inside
stories
since
they
were
con-
ducted
as
essentially
private
affairs.
And
the authors,
as
practicing
journalists,
have
put together substantial
portions
of
the
fascinating
party
in-fighting.
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