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A Journey |  | Author: Tony Blair
Publisher: Hutchinson
Category: Book
List Price: £25.00 (25.93EUR)
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Seller: Amazon.co.uk
Rating:  30 reviews
Sales Rank: 1
Media: Hardcover
Pages: 624
Shipping Weight (lbs): 2.4
Dimensions (in): 9.3 x 6.1 x 1.9
ISBN: 009192555X
EAN: 9780091925550
ASIN: 009192555X
Publication Date: September 2, 2010 (New: This Week)
Availability: Usually dispatched within 24 hours
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Product Description
In 1997, Tony Blair won the biggest Labour victory in history to sweep the party to power and end eighteen years of Conservative government. In this title, he reveals in detail his political and personal journey, providing an insight into the man, the politician and the statesman. It also charts his successes, controversies and disappointments.
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| Customer Reviews:
Showing reviews 1-5 of 30
 A Different Angle ! September 7, 2010
Alan Callaghan (Ibiza, Spain)
6 out of 12 found this review helpful
I generally love reading Amazon reviews, I buy most of my cd/books based on reviews by previous buying Amazon customers. However this book is turning into a personal vendetta agaisnt the man himself,and not the actual biography.
I doubt that most of the negative reviews, are by people that have even read the book.
I have read it, and I find myself going back and reading bits of it again. Its an honest read.
In football terms as many people love Manchester United , as do hate them. You are not going to convert those that hate them to change there minds or vice versa.
Facts - Tony Blair was the most popular Labour Prime Minister, post war. He won three elections, his biography is going to be the biggest selling book by any former leader of our Country. Yet nobody seems to have voted for him, or admits to buying the book.
I actually like Man Utd, but if I didnt, I would not buy a book about them, and then go online to slag them off.
I guarantee in ten years time, this book will be the must read for anyone, who is intersted in the history of New Labour.
Just buy the book, keep an open mind,and then keep hold of it for ten years, then compare it to David Cameron`s latest biography !!.
 DEEP DOWN I AM A SUPERFICIAL SORT OF BLOKE, REALLY September 7, 2010
Diacha (London)
10 out of 18 found this review helpful
Tony Blair's memoir is atrociously written but strangely seductive. My respect and sympathy for him increased on reading it.
Indeed, the writing is wincingly colloquial and relentlessly verbose. On it gushes for 691 pages populated with "guys, what-the-hells, get-a-lifes. " There is none of those qualities of gravitas that should go with being Prime Minister.
Despite this, the book is fascinating. In its breathless helter-skelter it conveys vividly what it must be like to be prime minister - or at least what is like to be Tony Blair as prime minister. We plunge through the kaleidoscope of events, meet the players, all of them jockeying for something, encounter the many briefs that must be mastered dance around the improvised bear traps and roadside banana skins that allies as well as enemies lay non-stop, and seek refuge in the comfort of the loo and in "non-excessive, excessive "drinking. The book is peppered with summings up of famous people, leadership tips, political insights and a running, sub voce self-commentary. Throughout there is a strand of insecurity, a conviction that - despite winning landslide elections - he is widely disliked and distrusted. As his career progresses, this strand links up with a sense of change fatigue and an impulse to get out. He takes bigger risks, attempting a sort of career suicide by doing the right rather than politically expedient thing.
Much has been written about Blair's coverage of the two or three big issues. On his relationship with Brown, there is little new other than that it is Blair that is saying it and here he is undoubtedly playing to the box office. He does this also in his chapter on "Diana." The story of the Northern Irish peace process - surely a legacy in itself - is also well known, though Blair's commentary on the protagonists and on his thoughts at the time is entertaining.
When it comes to Iraq, Blair gratifies his - it has to be said - hypocritically swollen -flood of vilifiers by refusing to confess his "guilt." Instead, he takes "responsibility" and expresses his deep anguish both directly in words and indirectly through the Freudian muddle of his explanations. It is clear that he acted from conviction - broadly supported at the time. He did believe in the probable existence of WMD programs and he was and is convinced that if terrorists or rogue states (such as today's Iran, which he believes should be checked by all necessary measures) can access such weapons they will use them (if the 9/11 Islamists could have killed 300,000 rather than 3,000 innocent people, he asserts, they would have) and thus it is the Leader's paramount responsibility to stop them. He believes in the moral case for intervention against tyrants, which he declared in his "Chicago Doctrine" in 1999 and which was vindicated in both Kosovo and Sierra Leone. He is certain that Great Britain is inextricably aligned with the United States, not only in self-interest but in shared values, which while not perfect are better than all the others. There is no reason to doubt the sincerity or sanity of any of these convictions.
Reading "A Journey" reminds one of the seminal impact that Tony Blair's vision and energy had on British politics for over a decade. His central insight that Labour was doomed unless it modernized led to its reshaping and an unprecedented term in office. Along with Clinton, he midwifed the "Third Way," and offered a "progressive" alternative to the old politics of Left vs. Right. He devolved government, he assailed the "givens" in virtually every field of bureaucracy and he drove new ideas in welfare, education, healthcare and law and order. Not all of this has borne fruit, evidently, but there is no question that the baton that he snatched - over the heads of both of their parties - from Margaret Thatcher, and then re-shaped in his own image, has been successfully passed on to the momentarily safe hands of David Cameron and his Coalition Government.
Despite his almost unbearable lightness of presentation, Tony Blair was a weighty and transformational leader. He is a remarkable man and, I think, on balance a good one, no matter that his legacy is mixed.
Intelligently written and a superb insight September 7, 2010
M. C. Whiting (NORFOLK)
12 out of 23 found this review helpful
This book is a must read for anyone interested in the premiership of Tony Blair. Having recently completed Peter Mandelson's own epic, it was refreshing to see this account which retrospectively is a strong supporter of much of what the so called 'Prince of Darkness' was claiming.
Many people despise Tony Blair but I simply cannot agree with those who claim he was a bad Prime Minister. The biggest election swing in history does not happen by mistake and I'm sure many people who knock Blair will happily stroll into improved hospitals and send their children to revolutionised mainstream schools. I am not fighting an election for Blair here, I am just saying that too many people think he is the devil incarnate for taking us to a war which most of the House of Commons voted for and which any other Prime Minister would take us into. For some reason Thatcher was a hero for battering down an already crippled Argentinian army over a piece of farm land which was totally irrelevant to our country's interests. At the end of the day, all the evidence suggests (and boy we have seen all the enquiries) that Blair was only making a judgement based upon evidence he had received from professionals. The argument that Blair misled parliament is simply not true. Blair was misled, not Parliament. Another thing, Blair was actually much closer and more akin to the Bill Clinton than George W. Bush.
If you actually read the book, which most of its critics probably will not as their reviews are posted as the book is released (unless they can read it in about 5 minutes) then you will actually find a very truthful account presented in a writing style that shows considerable flair and ingenuity. Blair has the power, even in writing, of making you feel like you are in a personal conversation. There are no vacuous statements but the entire book is written in both a common and intellectual manner to be understood by all, not a learned elite which is the target audience for most political memoirs.
Blair's ego is sometimes over played upon although his admission of confidence in itself is a modest virtue and although he was insistent he should be in place of Gordon Brown, I don't think any sane person can argue against that.
So Blair was a fantastic Prime Minister and I think in our current climate with scandals here, failures there, and incompetence everywhere I think this country is missing him. Brown and Cameron have all had the chance, and saint Obama, to reverse the middle eastern exploits of the 2000's but none have taken that initiative. It just so happens that the PM often becomes the scapegoat of many misinformed individuals who should really put their blame elsewhere. Blair is a family man and has a justified moral compass which runs throughout the book. Incredibly, the book speaks of much praise for GB although the press overlook this for the rare quotations of his 'maddening' behaviour.
an important book September 7, 2010
socrates (UK)
8 out of 16 found this review helpful
The importance of this book cannot be overstated. Tony Blair was one of the most successful Prime Ministers of modern Britain. His governments transformed the country in all sorts of positive ways - bringing in the minimum wage, significantly reducing NHS waiting lists, bringing crime down, greatly improving educational performance, helping to bring peace to Northern Ireland, and essentially producing a much more tolerant society. His foreign policy successes in Kosovo and, especially, Sierra Leone (where military intervention saved thousands of lives) should be sources of significant pride. Helping to get rid of the murderous regime of Saddam Hussein is also something that one should take pride in.
This book provides important detail of so much of these successes. Tony Blair's moral framework as well as his remarkable political abilities are shown well in this very revealing book.
Given his political importance, it is not surprising that the book is listed as number 1 for sales. The book is important in large part because its writer was and continues to be greatly significant.
Great book September 6, 2010
AlistairReview
8 out of 22 found this review helpful
Excellent! Everything you want from an account of one of the most influential and powerful men in British political history. All the stories, plenty one never knew before, gossip - too much of it but interesting - and general atmosphere surrounding his life as PM. As a novel, fairly week but as a political report, hugely entertaining miles better than the customary autobiography
Showing reviews 1-5 of 30
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