Ernest Bevin: Labour's Churchill

(Paperback)

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Description

Book of the year, The Spectator
Political book of the year, The Times

As a statesman, Ernest Bevin is second only to Churchill in impact and legacy. Born in abject poverty to a single mother, and with virtually no formal education, Bevin went on to become the founder of the largest trade union in British history and then made it to the top of politics and government.

As Minister of Labour and National Service from 1940 to 1945, he was the nations wartime mobiliser-in-chief. Clement Attlee, Churchills Deputy Prime Minister, kept the wartime coalition in good administrative order, but it was the charismatic Bevin who really drove the domestic war effort.

As post-war Foreign Secretary, Bevin was Britains last world power envoy and did much to thwart Stalins Soviet Union and to prevent Europe sinking back into conflict. No one did more to stabilise and democratise Europe and to pave the way for the European Union.

In this major, wide-ranging new biography, Andrew Adonis brings to life one of our greatest statesmen a politician whose light is often unjustly hidden beneath that of his more celebrated contemporaries.

Reviews

Book of the year, The Spectator; Political book of the year, The Times; 'A biography brimming with colour and insight that brings both the character of the man and his many achievements vividly to life.' Andrew Rawnsley, The Observer

Author Bio

Andrew Adonis was at the heart of the BlairBrown government for twelve years, serving as Minister for Schools under Tony Blair and as Transport Secretary in Gordon Browns Cabinet. Formerly, he was a journalist on The Observer and the Financial Times and a Fellow of Nuffield College, Oxford. His previous books include 5 Days in May, acclaimed as a West Wing-style thriller about the formation of the CameronClegg coalition. A member of the House of Lords, he has twice been named Peer of the Year in the Channel 4 and Spectator awards.