Tony Blair - Publish and be damned

How Tony Blair's Journey ended on the page

Anne McElvoy
 

Tony Blair still has the same pen he used in the Downing Street years — a classy fountain guiding a firm, slanting script. The loops and swirls evident in his lengthy letter as a prospective candidate currying favour with Michael Foot in the early Eighties have disappeared. Blair's self-certainty became first his guiding strength in office — and, finally, his nemesis.

Today, Blair bares all in a £4.6 million memoir that launches the new publishing season. A Journey — downgraded from The Journey after friends advised that it sounded too self-aggrandising — sets the seal on his period in office.

There was never much doubt that the book would go to Random House, the publishing group where chief executiveGail Rebuck raised the subject of a memoir years ago at a dinner with him and her husband, Blair's respected pollster, Philip Gould. There was an “understanding” long before a contract was signed, and her relationship with Blair was one of her strongest cards with Random House's owners, the German publishing giant Bertelsmann. One insider remembers her “producing him quite casually at a dinner for Bertelsmann bosses at her home in Regent's Park”. They were suitably impressed.

It is hoped that despite refusing to do a serialising deal in Britain, the book will “earn out” — ie recap its financial outlay, on US sales. “Blair is a world figure,” says a source at Random House. “This is the nearest thing to the Clinton memoir. You want to share in the story of triumphs and disasters whether or not you're British.”

Early drafts of the manuscript, I'm told, were deemed “informative but a bit stodgy”, and Blair the author is prone to repetitive similes and clichés. He did, however, agree to divulge personal details, including his unhappiness about drinking too much in the evening when the pressures of the job — and Gordon Brown — got too difficult to bear.

To write A Journey, Blair locked himself away at his Foundation HQ at home in Connaught Square with piles of notes, prepared by his loyal staff. Key figures at the Foundation, such as Ruth Turner and press aide Matthew Doyle, have been alongside since the Number 10 days and helped recall key events.

One rival publisher joked last night that parts of the manuscript read as if “written in the airport on an iPad”, and the travails of dealing with a writer who is rarely in the UK soon became apparent at Random House after the coup of securing his memoirs was announced three years ago and the graft began.

Blair confided to an old friend that he needs “at least £5 million a year just to keep the show on the road”, and with lucrative roles as “Middle East envoy”, adviser to a climate-change institute and speech-maker, he made it clear that he would not scale back commitments. A Journey's in-house editor was Caroline Gascoigne — a former Sunday Times literary editor. At one point, a source says, “the manuscript was coming in piecemeal, which made Caroline's job very difficult because everything was out of order”.

But Blair's old friend and former Chief of Staff Jonathan Powell has been a key player. “On the personal stuff, Blair wanted another source of judgment besides Cherie,” said a mutual friend. “Jonathan encouraged him to be frank — not least about Gordon.”

01.09.10

Source : http://www.thisislondon.co.uk/lifestyle/article-23872838-an-insight-into-tony-blairs-journey.do