Product Description

Since joining the House of Commons in 1950, Edward Heath has been at the centre of British political life - as Chief Whip, Minister of Labour, Lord Privy Seal, Leader of the Conservative Party, and Prime Minister from 1970 to 1974. Writing with great candour, he offers us valuable and entertaining insights into the events of the past sixty years; including taking Britain in to the EC, the changes in the Conservative Party and the great issues of policy at home and abroad, not least the beginnings of the Troubles in Northern Ireland. Since leaving the premiership, he has maintained a central role in political and international affairs. Both as a record of an unequalled life of public service and as an important document of people and events, THE COURSE OF MY LIFE is as entertaining as it is revealing.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #229206 in Books
• Published on: 1998-10-08
• Original language: English
• Binding: Hardcover
• 782 pages

Amazon.co.uk Review
Edward Heath's autobiography is at times oddly impersonal; much of its emotional force has to do with a passion for setting the record straight. The son of a small builder, his Conservatism defined itself early on through his patriotism and passion for self-improvement. His travels in Europe as a young man filled him with a dread of the Nazis and he had, as they say, a good war. Just as his time in charge of firing squads put him off capital punishment, so the war made him a determined European; his premiership failed in many ways, but he did succeed in getting Britain into Europe.

His opposition to recent Conservative leaders is less the personal pique sometimes alleged than a determination not to see his legacy destroyed. His resolution not to let the Eurosceptics rewrite history sometimes bogs his story down in repetitive score-settling; given the charge of disloyalty so often made against him, it is legitimate that he establish his credentials. At the book's occasional best, he shows a dry humour and an unexpected sense of his own absurdity; there are some surprising vignettes as well, like Fidel Castro drunkenly ranting about his hero- worship of Winston Churchill, and Enoch Powell promising to break an NHS strike by importing Jamaican nurses. --Roz Kaveney

Matthew Parris in the Sunday Telegraph
'An account of his own life which crackles with interest, veracity and even feeling'

Douglas Hurd in Times Literary Supplement
‘A very personal work. It describes the fortunes and misfortunes of a remarkable patriot'

Customer Reviews

Not always well tempered
There seems to be a rule: the worse the politician the better the memoirs. Heath's aren't bad. He was an odd figure. Chosen as Tory leader to rival the modern Wilson style, he proved to be an awkward, lonely and rather inflexible Prime Minister. His Premiership is often judged a failure. This book doesn't reveal much of his emotional life. He confesses that "I am told I do not always find it easy to express my appreciation of people to their faces." Otherwise the private man remains just that.

And yet this book goes a long way to rescue his reputation. Heath goes back earlier than I had realised. His Europeanism was sincerely and profoundly rooted in 1940's wartime duty as an artillery commander in the allied invasion of Germany. As Tory Chief Whip in the 1950's he held his party together during the Suez debacle and emerged with honour (unlike Prime Minster Eden, here described telling his cabinet secretary to burn incriminating documents). Heath grappled early with deep and intractable issues, especially Britain's long term economic decline, immigration, Powell, Ulster (the IRA bombed his home) and above all unruly and over-wheening trade union power. Long before there was any sort of consensus about how to deal with them (the Thatcher/Blair generation's achievement) Heath's old fashioned Butler/Macmillan one-nation Toryism simply did not measure up to the awfulness of trying to govern Britain in the 1970's.

Heath's Europeanism never falters and reflects a very English pragmtatism. On the vexed issue of losing sovreignty to Europe Heath relies on the simple formula that we are pooling, not surrendering it. On the Federal question he calls the EU "sui generis", neither free trade area nor super state in waiting, never imitated and always different to any abstract theory or model.

Heath's book has a few gems which enliven a sometimes not lively narrative. Visiting Soviet leaders Khrushchev and Bulganin could not grasp Heath's explanation of what he did as a whip ("How do you mean, persuade them to support you? Surely you just tell them to?")

Perhaps two moments define the man. Having achieved his poltical dream of actually getting the UK into the EU, this classless moderniser turns his back on the burgeoning celebrations, retires alone to his solitary room at Number Ten where he gather strength by playing a Bach prelude from the Well-Tempered Clavier on his clavichord. The other, 1968 and he quotes his old enemy Enoch Powell as Health Minister saying in the cabinet room that there was no need to cede a nurses' pay claim because " I can bring in all the nurses we need from the west Indies." Game set and match there, Enoch. Overall not an easy read; but then not an easy man.

Very interesting read, and far better than expected
I expected this book to be a winge... why the press treated Heath unfairly, why Margaret Thatcher did it all wrong by not listening to Uncle Ted, why Saddam Hussein is actually a very nice chap etc.. and yet I finished the book in absolute admiration for the longest serving MP in Parliament.

Edward Heath paints a fairly honest view of his life, of his achievements and regrets as a politician, of his interests outside of politics, notably music and sailing. He writes openly and honestly of his distain for Margaret Thatcher and regardless of the reader's opinion on whether he is right or not, I felt as a reader he was being honest with what his feelings were.

Heath also reflects fairly openly on where his failures as Prime Minster were, often with the apparent view that it would have been the same for anyone else in his position, but nonetheless it is a reflection. He paints himself as an interesting combination of a man of absolute principle as well as a very stubborn man.

Most enjoyable for me in his book though is his explanation and nurturing of his long-standing belief in his own political views shown throughout the book as well as his views of Macmillan, Eden, and of course Thatcher and Major. A cynic might argue that his views are biased in his favour... but that's only fair, they were his views after all.

A valuable insider's view of British politics
A fascinating insight into the mechanisms of a political genius. Heath's individual and honest style harks back to an age when British politics was a fascinating and open political battleground rather than the stagemanaged posturing served up today. This book will appeal to Westminster junkies from acroos the political spectrum. At times during the excesses of the Thatcher government Heath spoke with an honesty and openess more harmful to her powerbase than Neil Kinoock's opposition. It took the rest of the party a further eleven years to concur with his reservations.