Part of the Pattern: Memoirs of a Wife at Westminster

by Edna Healey

Edna Healey has been married to Denis Healey for more than fifty years and has seen parliamentary life, both in power and opposition from the inside. An accomplished historian and film-maker – Mrs Livingstone, I Presume won a best documentary award – Edna forged her own career as a writer and lecturer while her husband rose steadily to become Secretary of State for Defence and Chancellor of the Exchequer in successive Wilson governments. Edna travelled the globe with him and then moved their family to No. 11 Downing Street during his Chancellorship. Edna Healey has met many of the world’s leaders from Chou En Lai to President Clinton and writes about them with great insight and candour. She retains strong links with her birthplace in the Forest of Dean and the chapters on her early life and its lasting influence make moving reading.

320 pages, Hardcover

First published March 6, 2006

About the author

Edna May Healey née Edna May Edmunds, was a writer, lecturer and film-maker married to Denis Healey.