Bookbenchers: Sam Gyimah MP

Fleur Macdonald

Saturday, 4th February 2012

This week’s bookbencher is Sam Gyimah, the Conservative MP for Surrey East.

Which book's on your bedside table at the moment?

Wolf Hall by Hilary Mantel: a great historical novel, covering a fascinating period.   The personalities may change, but the human dynamics of politics are the same today as portrayed in the 16th century.

Which book would you read to your children?

I don’t yet have children and I didn't learn to read myself until late in my childhood because of a family upheaval, so a lot of children’s books passed me by.  That said, I recently shared the story of the ‘Hummingbird’ read by Wangari Mathai at a primary school assembly in my constituency
  
Which book do you think best sums up 'now'?

The big debate, as we grapple with the effects of the financial crisis, is what responsible capitalism looks like, because for many people the system isn’t working.  So, at one end you’ve got No Logo by Naomi Klein, which is the cultural manifesto for the Occupy movement, and at the other end you’ve got think pieces like Bill Clinton’s recent FT article ‘Charity needs Capitalism to solve the world’s problems’. Jim O’Neill’s book The Growth Map tells it as it is. Economic power is shifting from the West to the East and to address our economic woes we need to wake up to the challenges and opportunities of the BRICs.

What was the last novel you read?

A Week in December by Sebastian Faulks. I don't read much fiction generally, but I've always found Faulks’ writing style thoroughly engaging. 
 
Which book would you most recommend?

It's a close call between two biographies. William Wilberforce by William Hague, and Team of Rivals by Doris Kearns-Goodwin, which is a biography of Abraham Lincoln and his rivals in the race for the Republican nomination in 1860, all of whom eventually served in his cabinet.  In both cases, you've got remarkable human beings who happen to be politicians, who bring their human qualities to bear in solving challenging political problems. 

Given enough time, which book would you like to study deeply?

Isaiah Berlin is a very perceptive thinker and I’d like to study his work more closely. I'll start with The Hedgehog and the Fox.
 
Which books do you plan to read next?

I'm working through Tim Harford's Adapt, Nassim Taleb's Black Swan and Malcolm Gladwell's Outliers. I'm fascinated by the psychology that drives innovation and entrepreneurship, and, if I could make the time, that's what I would write a book on.     

If the British Library was on fire and you could only save three books, which ones would you take?

In 2005, I edited a book titled From the Ashes...the Future of the Conservative Party but, despite the relevance of the title to the task, I would have to focus on rescuing those texts that are widely acknowledged to have made a huge impact; so I will go for the Magna Carta (1215), The King James Bible (1611), which is a fantastic literary text and has had more influence than any other book in its 400 year history, and the First Folio (1623) by William Shakespeare.

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