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A Most Wanted Man

Morality tale with a difference

John le Carré
Hodder & Stoughton, 340pp, £18,

Honor Clerk

Wednesday, 1st October 2008

A Most Wanted Man, by John le Carré

Norman Fowler is no Nigel Lawson. This reviewer never knew him as more than a passing acquaintance, even when he was a colleague in the dog days of the last Tory government and briefly in the early days in opposition after 1997. He has had a long and distinguished career as a minister and as a servant of the Conservative party. He served in the Thatcher cabinet both at Transport and as Health and Social Services Secretary, and as party chairman after the 1992 election. He is the man who coined the phrase that he was resigning ‘to spend more time with my family’. He is one of the few who, in uttering it, were telling the truth. He was generally well-liked, competent, loyal, middle-of-the-road, quiet, unflashy. It is difficult to imagine that he ever harboured ambitions beyond the cabinet. Indeed, at one point in this book, he confesses that once he had hoped to be home secretary. It probably did him no harm that he had been at Cambridge with so many of those who came to grace both the Thatcher and Major cabinets. No wonder prime ministers and party leaders repeatedly sought his services. He was that rare but essential commodity, a safe pair of hands. As he says, Margaret Thatcher saw him as a good defender.

The book is consistent with the man. As you would expect from a former Times journalist, the prose is workmanlike and his account of the events he describes, clear. He eschews gossip. There is a whiff of truth in his self-description as a ‘media Jeeves for the politically-oppressed’.

At one level, it sounds worthy and ever so slightly dull. However, for those interested in politics, the book is more than that. He uses his closeness to events for over 30 years to draw conclusions about the dynamics of governments, both Conservative and Labour. He understands what happens when an administration ‘runs out of steam’ as he puts it. Moreover, time and again his judgment of people and events rings true. For instance, he is justifiably kind to John Major, whose decency and doggedness and unrecognised achievements he underlines. As a result, his criticisms seem fair and could not give offence even to the most thin-skinned of former prime ministers.