Author’s Corbyn claims that simply hit the buffers

A new biography of Jeremy Corbyn by the celebrated writer Tom Bower states that the Labour leader rarely reads books. But is this true?

Talal Karim, a friend of Corbyn for 40 years, says Bower is wrong. He tells me Corbyn has a large library and is constantly recommending fresh reading matter to colleagues.

Mr Karim recalls a visit to India and Bangladesh with the Labour leader, during which Corbyn ‘devoured’ Freedom At Midnight (an account of the events surrounding Indian partition) and Mahatma Gandhi’s memoirs. He also says Mr Bower’s account of the trip is strewn with errors.

The visit lasted ten days, not three weeks. Corbyn did not travel by steam train from Mumbai to Calcutta, ‘either sitting on a carriage roof or on the footplate shovelling coal into the furnace’ as the book suggests.

Corbyn took the intercity non-stop Rajdhani express. Contrary to Bower’s account, this service doesn’t allow passengers to sit on the roof.