Conservative MPs' Christmas reading list

There was much excitement over the summer about the reading list which Conservative MP Keith Simpson circulated from which he hoped colleagues would select their holiday reading.

So you may be interested to see the below, his Christmas reading list for Conservative MPs.

He emphasises that it is merely a "list of suggestions and there is no three line whip of compulsory reading with a Q and A exam when we return in January".

• Angus Hawkins - The Forgotten Prime Minister: The 14th Earl of Derby, Achievement, 1851-1869 (Oxford University Press, £30.00)
• David Torrance - George Younger: A Life Well Lived (Berlin £30.00)
• Sir David Mitchell - From House to House: The Endless Adventure of Politics and Wine (The Memoir Club £18.00)
• Bernard Donoughue - Downing Street Diary, Vol II (Jonathan Cape £30.00)
• David Marquand - Britain Since 1918: The Strange Career of British Democracy (Weidenfield and Nicholson £25.00)
• Giles Radice - The Tortoise and the Hares: Attlee, Bevin, Cripps, Dalton, Morrison (Politico’s Publishing Ltd £25.00)
• Chris Moncrieff - Wine, Women and Westminster: Behind the Scenes – Stories of MPs at Play over 50 years (J R Books £14.99)
• Matthew Parris and Prue Mason - Mission Accomplished!: Things Politicians Wish They Hadn’t Said (J R Books £8.99)
• Chris Patten - What Next? Surviving the Twenty-First Century (Allen Lane £25.00)
• Hugo Young - The Hugo Young Papers: Thirty Years of British Politics – Off the Record (Allen Lane £30.00)
• Niall Ferguson - The Ascent of Money: A Financial History of the World (Allen Lane £25.00)
• David Loyn - Butcher and Bolt: Two Hundred years of Foreign Engagement in Afghanistan (Hutchinson £18.99)
• Hew Pike - From the Front Line: Family Letters and Diaries 1900 to the Falklands and Afghanistan (Pen and Sword £19.99)
• Conor Foley - The Thin Blue Line: How Humanitarianism Went to War (Verso books £14.99)   
• Richard Dowden - Africa Altered: States, Ordinary Miracles (Portobello Books, £25.00)
• Doris Kearns Goodwin - Team of Rivals: The Political Genius of Abraham Lincoln (Simon and Schuster £11.00)
• Simon Schama - The American Future: A History (The Bodley Head £20.00)
• Robert Reich - Supercapitalism: The Battle for Democracy in an Age of Big Business (Icon Books £12.99)
• Alice Schroeder - The Snowball: Warren Buffett and the Business of Life (Bloomsbury £25.00)
• Bob Woodward - The War Within: A Secret White House History, 2006 – 2008 (Simon Schuster £18.99) (This book complements his three previous works, Bush at War (2002), Plan of Attack (2004) and State of Denial (2006)).
• Bartin Gellman - Angler: The Shadow President of Dick Cheney (Allen Lane £25.00)
• James Harding - Alpha Dogs: How Spin Became a Global Business (Atlantic Books £22.00)
• Anthony J Badger - FDR: The First Hundred Days (Hill and Wang £16.99)
• Milton Friedman and Anne Jacobson Schwartz - The Great Contraction 1929 – 1933 (Princeton University Press, £11.00)
• Anthony Trollope - The Way We Live Now (Oxford Paperbacks, £7.99)
• Celia Haddon - The Joy of Cats (Hodder and Stoughton £9.99)

Simpson, a military historian, adds the following note at the end of the list in order that readers can decide over Christmas whether they are positionalists or manoeuvrists...

"Positional and Manoeuvre Warfare
Generally speaking positional warfare is one dimensional and about occupying ground and is mainly attritional.  Manoeuvre warfare is about operating in three dimensional space and mystifying and misleading your opponent.  Naturally, in warfare there will be times when you need to be a positionalist, not least to draw in your enemy and wear him down.  But the manoeuvrist approach is much thought of by today’s military who appreciate that our terrorist opponents certainly favour it as a method of waging war.
Naturally, you can’t draw exact parallels between military operations and politics but there are some interesting similarities, not least in balancing means and ends."



Comments

[Sally Roberts]

I wouldn't have thought any of them would have time to read over Christmas! Constituency drinks parties, wives making them go out and get the Christmas tree, put up the Christmas lights, play Father Christmas, talk nicely to the mother-in-law, read the lesson in church, carve the turkey etc. etc. etc. - I think you get the picture! They will probably want to come back to Westminster for a rest!

[Hawkeye]

What a dull list of books - get a good thriller novel or Terry Pratchett's latest offering and have a good laugh.... If you haven't already read Spike Milligan's war memoirs then it is time you did.

[Tim Worrall]

Do you know, when I read the list I felt sure that there would be a UKIP troll comment about Chris Patten's book. Ah well, perhaps they haven't visited yet today.

I'm still working my way through the summer list, although this lot actually looks rather interesting - my 2009 list for sure!

[comstock]

Look at the length of that list!

Jeez, how long do these guys get off for Xmas!?!

[Dave B]

No Alan Furst?

A list in need of amending :-)

[Inspector Morgan]

Do you know, when I read the list I felt sure that there would be a TRG troll comment about Chris Patten's inane book. And so it proved.

[Peregrine]

Crumbs, is this list designed for insomniacs?

My problem with most political books, and to a greater degree business books, is that the lessons to be learnt from them can be had in the first quarter to a third of the book.

I have dragged myself through the first half of Goodwin's book on Lincoln, Nudge remains three quarters read on my bookshelf and any number of must read books remain unfinished. The only non-fiction that seems to get finished is military history, I can highly recommend The Iron Marshall by John Gallagher.

[Sources close to William Norton]

Or why not ditch the whole lot and try this instead: White Elephant

[Graeme Archer]

Only one novel, and that by a liberal wannabe MP whose entire ouevre I would have expected to be a sine qua non for any candidate, let alone an Hon member. How depressing. Ditto the inclusion of the works of cod sociology masquerading as behavioural psychology. Actually, I don't know what's more depressing; the list itself, or the notion that educated adults should have their reading directed.

[Malcolm Dunn]

I read a book once.

[Barton Gellman]

Delighted to make the list. May I just correct the spelling of my name? It's Barton, not Bartin.

[Edison Smith]

Last Christmas I read Balfour: The Last Grandee by RJQ Adams.

This year I will read Bonar Law by the same author.

[Graeme ex-Scrooge Archer]

I want to apologize for my earlier comment, I was in a right bah-humbug mood- the kettle broke so crap tea via saucepan, Christmas cards unwritten again etc etc. Had a bath. Smoothed a cat. Some sort of genius electrician partner fixed kettle. Sorry for prior negativity, it's an interesting list!

[Martin Jee]

I think I'm a manoeuvrist - the last few times I have played Axis and Allies with my friends I been able to keep my opponents on a back foot by constantly launching attacks, even when I knew they wouldn't be won. Thus retaining the initiative (what a clever clogs).

I wonder whether DC is a positionalist or manoeuvrist?