Pistols at Dawn: Two Hundred Years of Political Rivalry from Pitt and Fox to Blair and Brown

by John Campbell

Does all politics come down to personal rivalry? John Campbell presents a fresh angle on political battles by considering eight pairs of rivals and showing how their mutual antagonisms have determined the course of political conflict for two centuries.

Genres: History, Politics, Nonfiction

480 pages, Hardcover

First published June 4, 2009

About the author

John Campbell (born 1947) is a British political writer and biographer. He is a graduate of the University of Edinburgh. His works include biographies of Lloyd George, Roy Jenkins, F.E. Smith, Aneurin Bevan, Edward Heath, and Margaret Thatcher, the last consisting of two volumes, The Grocer's Daughter (2000) and The Iron Lady (2003). A one-volume abridgment prepared by David Freeman (a historian of Britain teaching at California State University, Fullerton) titled The Iron Lady: Margaret Thatcher, From Grocer's Daughter to Prime Minister, was published in 2009 and reissued in paperback in 2011. He was awarded the NCR Book Award for his biography of Heath. He is married with two children and lives in London.

Campbell was consultant to the 2009 production of "Margaret", a fictionalisation of Margaret Thatcher's fall from power, and the 2012 film "The Iron Lady'.

Reviews

[Emilija · Rating 3 out of 5]

I started off really enjoying this book. The first few chapters really felt like political rivalries, but the second half of the book felt like it changed from competing ideologies to competing strands within the same ideology, and I feel like the book kind of lost something when it made that change. The more modern "rivalries" didn't really feel like they stood up to the earlier rivalries. In particular, I found the Blair vs Brown and the Thatcher vs Heath chapters so boring that I skimmed them. If he was characterising them as rivalries, he could also have chosen Chamberlain vs Churchill.

It was a good book, worthy of a read, even if the last couple of chapters are skimmed.

[Adam Higgitt · Rating 4 out of 5]

Most people interested in Parliamentary history will have come across the names of the 16 protagonists of John Campbell's marvellous survey of great political rivalries. From Pitt to Blair, via Gladstone, Bevan and Thatcher these personalities are well known. John Campbell's achievement is not to re-chronicle their extraordinary careers, but bring to life a vivid and often exhilarating sequence of contests that have shaped British politics over the past two centuries.

Campbell's scholarship is thorough, and this makes all the difference as he draws on a wide array of sources, often from the subjects themselves to describe rivalries that spanned decades.

Perhaps unsurprisingly, the earliest chapters, particularly covering Fox vs Pitt, Disraeli vs Gladstone and Asquith vs Lloyd George, are the best. Campbell is able to articulate the momentous ebbs and flows of these contests, as well as the wider events that intersected and interjected, from the Corn Laws to the Iraq war. As a brief survey of those periods of British political history, it's not at all a bad primer.

Some of the contests covered are not as compelling, and the inclusion of a chapter on Heath vs Thatcher is highly questionable. Indeed, it somewhat dignifies the term "rivalry" to include in it Thatcher's efficient defenestration of her Leader, at which point he vanished without return into relative obscurity while she became one of the most notable Prime Ministers of the 20th century. Likewise his disdain for modern politics - made clear in the introduction - colours his chapter on Blair and Brown to such an extent that he renders them unworthy of comparison to earlier political giants.

But that does not spoil the overall effect, which is to remind us how the force of personality and the accident of association have driven our governments to a much greater extent that ideology or policy.

[Ipswichblade · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book charts the political rivalries throughout the years and is very well written. It is interesting to see the politicians in the same party hating each other more than their rivals. One even ends up with two of them fighting a duel. ( I will give you a clue its not Edward Heath and Margaret Thatcher!!)
Worth a read if you are interested in politics

[Anna · Rating 4 out of 5]

Interesting concept for a book which provides light reading of modern political rivalries, whilst covering some in more depth than others. Very enjoyable and worth a read.