Reflections: Conversations with Politicians

by Peter Hennessy, Robert Shepard, Robert Shepherd

“The historian,” wrote E. L. Doctorow, “will tell you what happened. The novelist will tell you what it felt like.” This book sees Peter Hennessy and Robert Shepard combine both approaches with the art of the interviewer, a craft at once sensitive and probing.

Reflections collects transcripts of the best interviews from the BBC Radio 4 series Reflections with Peter Hennessy , a show on which the British political elite have spoken candidly about their careers and the moments that came to define their political lives. Supplementing the interviews are short biographies and profiles of the interviewees, allowing readers a fuller picture of each speaker’s background and professional trajectory. This revealing book includes conversations with political heavyweights such as former prime minister John Major; former foreign secretaries Margaret Beckett, David Owen, and Jack Straw; Labour Party leader Neil Kinnock; Liberal Party leader David Steel; and chancellor of exchequer Nigel Lawson. In addition, Reflections presents interviews with leading women, including Shirley Williams and Clare Short, who spent years at the forefront of their parties in Westminster.

The latest volume in the popular Haus Curiosities series, Reflections offers valuable insights from some of today’s most influential political figures.

140 pages, Hardcover

First published June 15, 2016

About the author

Peter Hennessy is an English historian and academic specialising in the history of government. Since 1992, he has been Attlee Professor of Contemporary British History at Queen Mary University of London.

He was born in Edmonton, the youngest child of William G. Hennessy by his marriage to Edith (Wood-Johnson) Hennessy

Hennessy attended the nearby Our Lady of Lourdes Primary School, and on Sundays he went to St Mary Magdalene church, where he was an altar boy. He was educated at St Benedict's School, an independent school in Ealing, West London. When his father's job led the family to move to the Cotswolds, he attended Marling School, a grammar school in Stroud, Gloucestershire. He went on to study at St John's College, Cambridge, where he was awarded a BA in 1969 and a PhD in 1990. Hennessy was a Kennedy Memorial Scholar at Harvard University from 1971 to 1972.

Hennessy went on to work as a journalist during the 1970s and 1980s.
He went on to co-found the Institute of Contemporary British History in 1986.

From 1992 to 2000, Hennessey was professor of contemporary history at Queen Mary and Westfield College, University of London. From 1994 to 1997, he gave public lectures as Professor of Rhetoric at Gresham College, London. From 2001, he has been Attlee professor of contemporary British history at Queen Mary.

Hennessy's analysis of post-war Britain, 'Never Again: Britain 1945–1951', won the Duff Cooper Prize in 1992 and the NCR Book Award in 1993.

Furthermore, his study of Britain in the 1950s and the rise of Harold Macmillan, 'Having It So Good: Britain in the 1950s', won the 2007 Orwell Prize for political writing

Hennessy was created a life peer on November 8, 2010.

Reviews

[Jonathan Fryer · Rating 5 out of 5]

At a time when so much TV interviewing of politicians is so curt and aggressive it's a pleasure to read the transcripts of Peter Hennessy#s courteous yet probing BBC Radio 4 interviews of senior UK politicians, made all the more informative because of the author's encyclopaedic knowledge of modern British history.