Blowing the lid off life in the thick of it
Diary Of An MP’s Wife: Inside And Outside Power ★★★★★ Sasha Swire Little Brown, £ 20
ILOOK at his [ Boris Johnson’s] rotund build, thick, creased neck, pale, sweaty face, and characteristic dishevelled appearance; he looks back, as if he is working out if I’m shaggable or past my sell- by date. He’d probably do the same if a sheep walked into the room. He has definitely lost that ‘ I’ve lost a lot of weight because I am committing adultery and my children won’t talk to me and my girlfriend is hot’ look.”
Welcome to the diaries of Sasha Swire, brimming with such caustic observations, salacious tidbits, and effervescent wit that it will surely take some time before she can show her face in Westminster again.
Spanning a 10- year period when her husband Sir Hugo Swire held a succession of ministerial positions, Swire has a ringside seat to the key political events of the last decade.
The daughter of Thatcher’s Defence Secretary Sir John Nott, Sasha is no stranger to the inner workings of power. Weekends are spent dining with royals, eating caviar with their friends Dave and Sam, or squabbling about Brexit with their daughter’s
godmother Amber Rudd.
It’s hard to imagine someone better positioned to tell the story from the sidelines and Sasha, admirably, doesn’t appear to have censored her diaries.
No one is spared from her acerbic tongue. There’s Old Ma May aka The Maybot, Pushy Patel and Raab C. Brexit. Boris is a “slobbering golden retriever” and a “calculating machine”, John Bercow a “little goblin”.
Even the Queen takes a hit: “I feel about two inches tall. She fixes her beady eyes on me briefly then swans past, not saying a word. She is telling me that I am just a plus- one, not a player or a heroine.”
The book is worth reading for these withering blows alone but it is in the glimpses into family life behind the scenes that it comes alive. As a state visit from the Queen looms, nineyear- old Siena Swire is going through a “Harriet the Spy stage”, taking notes in a “little black spying book”.
The book is full of highly sensitive information on security arrangements for the Queen and David Cameron – so when it’s accidentally left in a Belfast restaurant, a “phalanx of policemen” move like a tide to snatch it from a waiter’s hands.
Lady Swire holds the political views of someone upon whom the sun has always shone. She’s horribly entitled and utterly out of touch but her writing is luminous and her depictions of Westminster fizz with life. Even those who find her dyed- in- thewool views unpalatable will find these diaries riveting.