p. 190: It seems that the current Chancellor (Maudling), rather than (as stated here) Selwyn Lloyd, would be the figure on whom Wilson would have been focusing his criticisms at this point. Postal First Day Cover - honoring International Red Cross, postmarked 1963 - SIGNED by Harold Wilson (signature only). I think, however, that the author, under-plays the ultimate economic failure of Wilson and his governments, unable as they were to curb the overweening power of the trade unions.

Thomas-Symonds, who has had access to material that no other biographer has seen, has found little new evidence to explain away his reputation as a tactician, not a strategist. Labour’s official, conference-approved policy was to put the terms of entry to the public at a general election. I found it heavy going when the accent was on the political maneouvering but i enjoyed the second half more than the first.An interesting series on the discovery and settlement of the Elizabeth Islands off the southern coast of Massachusetts. The circumstances of the 1970 Labour defeat might be better spelled out by emphasizing the Opposition’s use of inflation as a campaign issue. The book is firmly bound in clean blue cloth, lettered in gilt to the spine, the extremities are slightly bumped and rubbed.

As he notes early in the book, major biographies of Wilson appeared in 1992-1993 (two by his count, but really three—we’ll come to that). Thomas-Symonds, however, would like us to see Wilson’s Britain as a different place to Thatcher’s: a modern country, socially liberal, anti-racist and in Europe. Green hardback(gilt lettering to the spine,two small nicks/tears inside the front cover) with Dj(a couple of nicks,creases and scratch on the Dj cover),both in VGC.Thomas-Symonds, in detailing Wilson’s handling of a variety of events, would seem to draw implicit comparison with later politicians fumbling their handling of similar situations.