Gordon Brown: The biography

by Paul Routledge

Genres: Politics, History, Biography

359 pages, Hardcover

First published October 5, 1998

Reviews

[Rory]

Read this to learn more about Gordon Brown, one of the most interesting political figures of recent decades.

I read that the author had exclusive access to Brown’s family documents and interviews with the later Prime Minster. However, this biography is not particularly insightful in that it incessantly block-quotes speeches and excerpts from Hansard and, indeed, uses these to form lion’s share of content regarding Brown’s political career.

This is often coupled with brief counterpoints from political figures and newspaper commentary. The result is little in-depth analysis and insightful findings. However, it has to be recognised that this book was published in 1998 and was probably authoritative when first released. It useful in the sense that there aren’t many other biographies of Gordon Brown.

It is still a decent exposition of Gordon Brown’s early life and career until 1998. It is an interesting biography - as would be expected of the subject matter - but not superlative. Worth a read if you’re interested in Brown.

[Jules]

only worth reading if you're already obsessed with new labour/gordon brown.... i only picked this up because it's mentioned as a major turning point in the souring of the blair/brown relationship and i wanted to see exactly why that was the case. and good lord this is basically just ripped from charlie whelan's wattpad page down to the ending line ("so perhaps it is true that the good guy wins in the end).

glad i picked this up for the entire chapter dedicated to dispelling the gordon brown gay allegations alone though. absolutely hilarious reading about how he is "for the lassies" for twenty-odd pages.