Books by Roy Jenkins

Den tidligere britiske indenrigsminister Roy Jenkins tegner et ualmindeligt omfattende og indsigtsfuldt portræt af et af den moderne politiske histories største ikoner, Winston Churchill. Fra barndommen til udfordringerne under Anden Verdenskrig og tiden herefter.

In his time, Harry S. Truman was one of the most under-rated presidents of the twentieth century. Succeeding the charismatic Roosevelt, he was often seen as an uninspiring leader, a poor diplomat and a fumbling politician. He was the first man to authorise the use of nuclear weapons, and was in office at the time when the multiplicity of hopes which arose at the end of the Second World War were inevitably disappointed.Nothing could be further from Roy Jenkins' view of him. This is the first biography of Truman to be written by an author with anything approaching the subject's own range of political experience, and Roy Jenkins brings to this book a quality of appreciation of Truman's political skills which has not been seen before. It is also the first biography to be written by a British author, giving it a new objectivity on the international affairs which occupied so much of Truman's presidency and by which he must be judged.

Jenkins' account of the constitutional struggle between the Liberal government of the early twentieth century and the House of Lords. The battle started with the introduction of the People's Budget of 1909 and continued through two general elections until 1911 when the Lords accepted the Parliament bill.

First published in 1989, this diary provides the background to two vital issues: our relations with the European Community and the state of politics in Britain. Few people are better qualified to know how we arrived where we are than Roy Jenkins. During the period of this diary he was President of the European Commission. The diary provides a picture of the day-to-day life of the head of an international organization, of the conflicting pressures and grinding routine, of the importance of personal relationships with world leaders such as Helmut Schmidt, Valéry Giscard d'Estaing, James Callaghan, Margaret Thatcher, Willy Brandt, Jean Monnet and Jimmy Carter.In addition to the political chronicle we have frank and sometimes unguarded revelations about the author, his tastes and preoccupations, from which emerges a man more imbued with public passion, more eccentric and with a more varied private life than many readers may expect. His subtle perception of people is revealed in brilliant portraits of, for example, Schmidt, pessimistic, streaked with melancholy, indiscreet and yet notably constructive, and Giscard d'Estaing, highly intelligent but with pretentions that sometimes make him faintly ludicrous.For those concerned with the way the world is developing and the impact of a civilized and essentially private personality on public events, European Diary is compulsory reading.

First published in 1984, this is the first biography of Stanley Baldwin for more than ten years, although there had been four in the preceding decade. This is strange, for Baldwin has recently begun to swim back into fashion. In part this is a function of growing nostalgia for his period of power, the 1920s and 1930s. Still more, however, it is " because Mrs Thatcher's brand of Conservative leadership has made him an object of contrasting interest in a way that Harold Macmillan's or Edward Heath's never did. When a new exponent of an alternative style temporarily achieves notice, it is now frequently suggested that he might be a new Baldwin. This reappraisal is therefore appropriately timed. It is written by a skilled political biographer, from a non-Conservative, although not personally unsympathetic, standpoint.Baldwin was born in 1867, the son of a rich Worcestershire ironmaster, and educated at Harrow and Trinity College, Cambridge. He then worked in the family business for twenty years. Although the most self-conscious countryman amongst British Prime Ministers of the past hundred years or more, he was not a country squire and never owned more than a few acres of land. He did not enter the House of Commons until he was forty, and was not even a junior minister until the threshold of fifty. Less than six years later, in 1923, he became Prime Minister and dominated British politics for the next fifteen years - the only man of this century to hold the highest office three times.

Roy Jenkins' riveting account of the great Chancellors of the Exchequer

Roy Jenkins follows up Churchill with a book of a very different shape; short and semi-autobiographical, but also full of the wit and erudition which make that book such a success. Each of the twelve cities are described with a mixture of architectural interest, topographical insight, and personal anecdote. Jenkins has three British cities: Cardiff, which was the metropolis of his Monmouthshire childhood, Birmingham which he represented in Parliament for 27 years, and Glasgow, which aroused in him an enthusiasm far transcending politics. Further afield there is Paris, Brussels, where he lived for four years as President of the European Commission; Bonn, and Berlin, surveyed from its pre-war splendour, through to its architectural resurgence of the 1990s, Naples and Barcelona. From Lord Jenkins's over a hundred visits to North America there emerge highly personal recollections of New York and a more objective view of the of Chicago. Dublin, so near to home and yet so distant, makes up the dozen. Twelve Cities is a fascinating and sparkling collection from one of our very finest writers