Overview
Michael Foot has long been hailed as the finest political writer of the age. His biographies of Aneurin Bevan and H. G. Wells won him massive critical acclaim, but it is an essayist that he remains in a class of his own. This new collection - published to mark his ninetieth birthday - brings together fifty years of essays, from his Tribune article on the death of Stalin in 1953 ('It is as well that the myth should be buried in the same coffin') to his reflections on 'a better way to abolish the weapons' in 2003.The same depth of feeling is deployed throughout this wide-ranging collection covering the people who have most influenced and enthralled him - natural choices such as Bevan and Bevin, Byron, Hazlitt and Beaverbrook alongside less obvious figures such as Peggy Ashcroft, Bob Boothby and Stanley Morison - and the places - Hampstead, Wales, Venice, Dubrovnik - which have remained closest to his heart. Nor does he forget his beloved dog Dizzy.
Shot through with characteristic verve and passion and reflecting a lifetime's commitment to books and ideas, this is classic Michael Foot.
Synopsis
To mark his 90th birthday, British politician and political writer Foot assembles 50 essays that have not appeared in anthologies or collections before, and about a third of which are here published for the first time. They consider literary and political figures, books, and places. The US distribution is by ISBS. Annotation ©2003 Book News, Inc., Portland, OR