Harsh reality catching up with Corbyn
0 EX-MP Chris Mullin’s book A Very British Coup seems to foretell Jeremy Corbyn’s rise
refers to the first novel’s turbulent leftwing PM. “Harry Perkins,” it will read, “was buried on the day that America declared war on China.”
Young. Both had seen this at first hand, in Rausing’s case accompanied by a global media frenzy when the body of her heroin-addict brother’s equally addicted wife was found in their London home. The subject of Young’s memoir is Robert Lockhart, the charismatic and hugely gifted composer. He was the love of her life before he ruined his own through the alcoholism that finally killed him aged 52.
There are, apparently, one and a half million of us whose lives are overshadowed by addiction. They will know far more than I ever will about the roller-coaster of despair, hope, anger and love this must entail. I would, however, find it hard to imagine that it could ever be delineated as devastatingly as in Young’s You Left Early. Rausing’s book Mayhem is perhaps less open, but is no less brave.
In the past three decades, Tom Devine pointed out, a “silent revolution” has been going on in Scotland. For the first time in centuries, Scotland has become a net importer rather than exporter of people – and a good job too, he said, at least as far as our economy is concerned.
The biggest group of immigrants – 477,000 at the last count – are the English, whose contribution to Scottish public life he extolled at length. “If you think that is controversial,” said chair Magnus Linklater, “you should read what he has to say about the Clearances.” That book is due out in October – but you have been warned. DAVID ROBINSON