Diaries Volume Three: Power and Responsibility
About this ebook
In this volume, we see that New Labour's honeymoon is well and truly over. In addition to detailing the continuing tensions at the top, here we find graphic accounts of a variety of domestic crises: foot-and-mouth disease and protests over fuel prices which almost brought Britain to a halt. Volume Three includes Peter Mandelson's second resignation, the agonies of the Millennium Dome, and the most unexpected slow-handclapping in memory, when the Women's Institute turned against Tony Blair. Yet despite all the problems - not least the most accident-prone manifesto launch in history, complete with deputy prime minister John Prescott punching a voter - Labour won a second successive landslide election victory. That triumph is intimately recorded here, alongside the high points of this period, such as devolution to Northern Ireland and the fall of Milosevic.
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About the author
Alastair Campbell was born in Keighley, Yorkshire in 1957, the son of a vet. After graduating from Cambridge University in modern languages, his first chosen career was journalism, principally with the Mirror Group, a career interrupted in the mid-80s by a nervous breakdown and the diagnosis of a drink problem. Campbell worked his way back to become a political editor and when Tony Blair became leader of the Labour Party, he asked Campbell to be his press secretary. He worked for Blair - first in that capacity, then as official spokesman and director of communications and strategy - from 1994 to 2003, and returned in 2005 to help Labour win a third election. He now splits his time between writing, speaking, consultancy and charity, as chairman of fundraising for Leukaemia and Lymphoma Research, and a leading ambassador for the mental health campaign, Time to Change.
He lives in North London with his partner of 33 years, Fiona Millar. They have three children. His interests include running, cycling, bagpipes and Burnley Football Club. He has published five volumes of diaries, including the bestselling The Blair Years, a memoir on depression, The Happy Depressive, a novel about fame, Maya, and his first acclaimed novel about mental illness, All in the Mind.
