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Great Parliamentary Scandals: Five Centuries of Calumny, Smear and Innuendo
In this highly entertaining, revealing and salutary expedition into the swamps of British politics, award-winning columnist and broadcaster Matthew Parris presents the low side of high office. About the author Matthew Parris entered politics and was an MP for seven years before quitting Parliament to present the TV series Weekend World regularly on radio, TV.
458 pages, Paperback
First published December 31, 1995
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Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews
April 27, 2015
A very interesting chronicle, written with just the right amount of humour. Personally, I found some scandals very tame, almost non-scandalous. Infact, at times, I even felt respect for the erring MP; like in the case of the Irishman, Charles Stewart Parnell,John Jeremy Thorpe and Maureen Colquhoun. At other times, I felt my eye brows getting raised, feeling quite scandalised in this age, to read what happened in the eras gone by.
All in all, a good book, if tad repetetive, in the nature of scandals concerned.
As a post script I would like to say, if our society had accepted homosexuality as natural, most of these scandals wouldn't have been. Infact, I am pretty sure, men, who were otherwise very talented, would have had a fruitful life and the size of this book, would have been cut by half!
Considering, this so called "menace" has been around since centuries (kings have been gay), I wonder why it still scandalizes us so much...
All in all, a good book, if tad repetetive, in the nature of scandals concerned.
As a post script I would like to say, if our society had accepted homosexuality as natural, most of these scandals wouldn't have been. Infact, I am pretty sure, men, who were otherwise very talented, would have had a fruitful life and the size of this book, would have been cut by half!
Considering, this so called "menace" has been around since centuries (kings have been gay), I wonder why it still scandalizes us so much...
March 21, 2018
Pretty good. Paris is a witty and humane writer. Who can forget his marvellous account of Howe's resignation speech?
December 27, 2019
The beauty of this book is that Parris was empathic. I got to learn so many things about the 'humanness" of us all. We are all frail, little creatures.
January 17, 2016
Decent book about politicians and scandals, not hard to find. Written in the mid nineties before a lot of the recent stuff came to light
Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews