When friends fall out

Political biography is in the doldrums. No one wants to read 800 pages or so of cradle-to-grave dead politics, especially if it’s familiar stuff and has all been written about before. The detail is too much, and the potted narrative of forgotten political manoeuvring tends to overwhelm the life. One way out of this dilemma is to write about relationships. Friendship in politics is the hidden key to the top — can you think of an anorak who made it as prime minister? Even the nerdish ones had friends — the younger Pitt had Wilberforce, Bonar Law had Beaverbrook; but once our hero climbs to the top of the greasy pole the dynamics change and old relationships fall apart. The really interesting biography of the Blair government will not be the life of Brown or Blair, but the story (still ongoing) of their ten years of feuding.

Graham Stewart has had the idea of looking at three widely different political friendships and the spectacular bust-ups that followed — Queen Anne and Sarah Churchill, then Benjamin Franklin, his son William and friend Joseph Galloway, and finally Asquith and R. B. Haldane.

Queen Anne’s friendship with Sarah Duchess of Marlborough works very well. Stewart vividly evokes the two women whiling away their youth playing cards in the Palace of Whitehall. At first, Sarah was the dominant one. Five years older than Anne, she was one of nature’s big sisters, bossy, ambitious and savvy about politics. The motherless Anne, by contrast, was dumpy, uneducated and seriously lacking in confidence. The two women played their cards right over the Glorious Revolution, deserting James in 1689. After that their friendship was cemented even more strongly, as Queen Mary, who disliked the Churchills, tried to break it up.