First Lady: The Private and Public Lives of Cherie Blair

by Maureen Paton

This biography of Cherie Blair, QC, the woman who is likely to be the new First Lady in May 1997, investigates her life and career against the backdrop of the poverty and deprivation of her difficult early years. At the turn of the millennium, she has been thrown into the spotlight by her husband's political success and ambitions. But, like Hilary Clinton, she is a successful professional person in her own right, as well as a wife and mother, and this is her own story. The author secured first-hand interviews with Cherie Blair's immediate family, friends and colleagues. The shows how she was neglected by her father, the alcoholic TV actor Tony Booth; describes how, as an extremely bright young law student and a fierce over-achiever, she came top in her bar exams; and tells how Labour high command feared that too much publicity for Cherie Blair may turn her into a political liability, as it did with Hilary Clinton. Maureen Paton is the author of "Alan The Unauthorized Biography".

240 pages, Hardcover

Published February 1, 1998