Michael Foot: A Life
Kenneth O Morgan
Harper Press, 568pp, £25
This book combines scholarship and observations to illuminate the life and career of one of the most enigmpoliticians in Labour’s history. The great achievement of Kenneth O Morgan’s biography is it reminds us what a wonderfully humane, cultivated and complex man Michael Foot was. Morgan uncovers the complexities and delves into the intricate relationships that forged the young Foot into the socialist firebrand he was to become. It recognises his liberal, intellectual upbringing and reminds us of his early literary successes with The Guilty Men, one of the great radical tracts of British history.
Morgan’s biography does full justice to both the public and the private side of Foot – no more tellingly than his descriptions of Foot’s marriage to the filmmaker Jill Craigie. It includes new revelations that Foot had an affair in the 1970s, which was only discovered by Craigie when he tidied up his notoriously dishevelled dress sense.
The book gives prominence to the strong personal relationships that Foot relied upon to shape his career and outlook, including Stafford Cripps, Aneurin Bevan and Lord Beaverbrook. Morgan handles Foot’s later relationships between Jim Callaghan and Tony Benn with great skill – but doesn’t fully explain the animosity with Benn, which still exists to this day.
His biography is remarkably objective and he doesn’t hide the negative views of Foot’s ministerial record. It is written with great lucidity and excellent pace.