What I'm reading ...

I have started reading Politics On the Edge by Rory Stewart. Despite his political affiliation, I always find Rory Stewart interesting to listen to, as he tends to just talk sense and be well informed. So, unusually, I ordered this book ahead of publication. I look forward to being educated about recent politics. Here’s the blurb:

Over the course of a decade from 2010, Rory Stewart went from being a political outsider to standing for prime minister - before being sacked from a Conservative Party that he had come to barely recognise.

Tackling ministerial briefs on flood response and prison violence, engaging with conflict and poverty abroad as a foreign minister, and Brexit as a Cabinet minister, Stewart learned first-hand how profoundly hollow our democracy and government had become.

Cronyism, ignorance and sheer incompetence ran rampant. Around him, individual politicians laid the foundations for the political and economic chaos of today. Stewart emerged battered but with a profound affection for his constituency of Penrith and the Border, and a deep direct insight into the era of populism and global conflict.

Uncompromising, candid and darkly humorous, Politics On the Edge is his story of the challenges, absurdities and realities of political life and a remarkable portrait of our age.

Lessons - by Ian McEwan

A longish book, so it took a while - but it was worth the effort. It tells the story of Roland’s whole life, with the timeline moving around, but not confusingly. The author’s descriptive prose conjures up vivid pictures, rather than just adding unnecessary floweriness. I’m not sure that I liked Roland - actually I found him a bit annoying - but that didn’t detract from my enjoyment of the read.

One irritant: I like to trust an author’s integrity so that I feel I learn from reading a book. So, silly errors niggle me. In this book we had an ambulance with a siren in 1959; emergency vehicles started using sirens about 5 years after this.