All The Old Familiar Places
Non-Fiction Titles
Politics & Power: Barbara Castle, a biography
Selected as a Financial Times political biography of the year.
'Taut and lucid' – Daily Mail
About Barbara Castle:
Barbara Castle should have been Britain’s first woman prime minister, but at the apex of her political power and public popularity she took a fatal decision which almost brought down the Labour government.
Her life was the history of the Labour Party from its (and her) radical beginnings through to New Labour. She became an MP in 1945 – the youngest of the then record 24 women elected – and remained in the House for 34 years, becoming a Cabinet Minister in successive administrations, the first woman to hold more than one portfolio and to survive politically for more than two years.
‘In attack she provides one the most awesome sights the House of Commons has to offer’ but her entrance into that institution was also ‘the sartorial moment of every parliamentary day’. ‘The best man in my cabinet’ Harold Wilson liked to call her, but Barbara never ‘un-sexed’ herself, she was an outrageous flirt, a glamorous brain box who played by her own rules and was not adverse to using ‘womanly wiles’ to get her own way.
When she died on the 3rd of May, 2002 she did so as ‘one of the dominating political figures of the 20th century’, as Tony Blair, the then prime minister, put it; ‘the people’s politician’, he might have added, if she hadn’t spent the last years of her life attacking him and ‘his Achilles heel…[of] self-love’ – when she wasn’t eviscerating much of his New Labour project. ‘In politics, guts is all’, she famously said, though she found to her chagrin that sometimes in politics, politics is all.
Politics & Power is her story.
Buy Politics & Power from Amazon.com or Amazon.co.uk.
Caught In A Mirror: Reflections of Japan
Praise for Caught In A Mirror:
‘She is the perceptive observer...who has penetrated Japan more deeply than most... Few...do as well...in revealing the honne [the way things really are]. Best of all Miss Martineau writes with a wry humour’ – The Economist
‘She does not talk down... to her readers...she draws the curtains to reveal the life and the feelings of today’s Japanese. It is...carefully observed, sometimes touchingly amusing and always informative’. – Financial Times
‘Lisa Martineau digs deeper. She knows her Japanese history. She has read the literature... Best of all, she introduces us to some ordinary Japanese...Martineau gets inside, and shows people coming to terms with a seemingly unbearable life’. – The Independent on Sunday
‘This book brings a range of new insights into a country that to most of us has become a cliché for industrial perfection...[Her writing] shows sensitivity, even affection, and toughness’. – The Independent
'She seems to have travelled much further and more adventurously…She is more original.. more wide-ranging…Caught In A Mirror is lively and responsible and I recommend it.' – Sunday Telegraph.
'Of the more general surveys, the best, I think, is Lisa Martineau's Caught In A Mirror: Reflections of Japan…[She] offers an unbigoted, funny and sensitive version of one woman's Japan…[and writes with] warmth and even-handedness.' – Daily Yomiuri
'If barbarians are those who destroy myth and masks as well as culture, Martineau is a most refreshing barbarian.' – Far Eastern Economic Review
'This book is engagingly written and will help to make Japan accessible to more readers in the West.' – New Scientist
'The paradox of Japan is expertly laid bare…a rare and revealing picture of modern Japan.' – The Journal, Newcastle Upon Tyne
'Martineau's book opens the door on the Japan often hidden to the outside world and is an important addition to [the] literature.' – Evening Leader, Wales
Buy Caught In A Mirror from Amazon.com or Amazon.co.uk.
