Michael Foot: A Life

The authorised – but not uncritical – life of one of the great parliamentarians and orators of our times, the former Labour Party leader, who was also an eminent man of letters.Michael Foot was a controversial and charismatic figure in British public life, political and literary, for over sixty years.Emerging from a famous west-country Liberal dynasty, he rose as a crusading left-wing journalist in the late 1930s: ‘The Guilty Men’ (his book on the pre-war appeasers of Nazi Germany) is one of the great radical tracts of British history. He was the voice of libertarian socialism in parliament, an international socialist and government minister, and was Labour leader for two…