A Private Life of Michael Foot Quotes

“The discussion later turned to Jamaica, which Michael had visited in January. Noel Coward had spent a good deal of time there, Michael noted. Michael met Coward once in a hotel: “He took me upstairs. He didn’t seduce me. I didn’t know about such things then,” he claimed. “An innocent abroad,” I commented. “Yes, I was.”
― Carl Rollyson, A Private Life of Michael Foot

“My legs are not quite properly operating and I’m having physiotherapy every Tuesday,” Michael said after Emma had beaten him to the phone. I accompanied him on one of these sessions, where he had to wait like anyone else for his turn. I was amazed that he did not have someone come to the house and that the therapy was not more frequent. He could barely walk now. But he was loyal to the National Health Service, the creation of his hero Nye Bevan and avoided any appearance of seeking special treatment or assistance outside the NHS.”
― Carl Rollyson, A Private Life of Michael Foot

“I went to this party for Francis Wheen’s book [on Marx]. I went and sat on a chair—at these places I can’t stand up and so I sat there and a woman came up to me—I gather from the Telegraph. It was just the day before Princess Margaret had died ... The woman said something like, “What do you think about [Princess Margaret’s death] and I said, “I don’t give a bugger about such things. I’m not giving any interview to you and she printed it. I should have been more careful. But there’s some truth in that. The bloody Sunday Times reprinted it. But Jill was very shocked by Princess Margaret—when we went down to Windsor for a weekend when they had a do [when Callaghan’s government fell]. Jack Jones was there and Princess Margaret came out and said, “Who is Jack Jones?” He was the most prominent labour union leader in the country. She didn’t say, “Can you tell me who is Jack Jones?” Dreadful, you see. But I shouldn’t have said that.”
― Carl Rollyson, A Private Life of Michael Foot

“Michael was a gallant campaigner—not just a politician, but a human being who tried to make every day an event. He would rise as high as possible to the occasion, drawing on whatever last reserves he had. He was not a man to hold anything back. The heroic way he confronted each day was what made it such an honour to be in his company.”
― Carl Rollyson, A Private Life of Michael Foot

“Talk of Blair stimulated Michael to say, “Some of our people are in my opinion too critical of him. Some of them say, ‘Oh Gordon Brown is much better, you know.’ I doubt that there is all that much distinction between the two.”
― Carl Rollyson, A Private Life of Michael Foot

“We spoke of other innovations—the fax machine, for example. Michael listened politely and though I offered to buy him one, emphasising how easy they were to operate, he could not be convinced. The wiring in the house had not been upgraded—God knows how old it was. Of course, he had plenty of people to help him and he had no interest in speeding up his existence.”
― Carl Rollyson, A Private Life of Michael Foot

“Before dinner we had our usual round of Scotch, chips, and olives. [MF] “I think it’s better with the olives, don’t you?” [CR] “Good contrast with the chips—crisps, Americans call them chips; the British call them crisps. You can’t call them chips. What you call chips Americans call French fries. [MF] Yes. So if you ask for either of those in your bloody country, you’ll get the wrong thing. [CR] Yes. So be careful next time you come. [MF] Hm.”
― Carl Rollyson, A Private Life of Michael Foot

“Tony?” Michael spoke into phone in an unusually quiet manner. “Michael Foot here. How are you? Can I wish you a happy new year?. I’m ringing about someone who’s writing a biography of Jill and I wondered if he could come and see you. He’s a fully qualified biographer, well prepared. He’s written some wonderful stuff before and he knew Jill and he would very much like to see you. What? Carl Rollyson. I think he did write to you in the last week or so ... He can speak to you now maybe? Yes, he’s with me now. He could come any time that is convenient for you over the next two or three days. Not Saturday. Sunday morning, you say? Have a word with him now. He’s very reliable, you know. He’s read Caroline’s book, of course [Tony’s wife had published a biography of Keir Hardie]. So here he is.” I took the phone: “Hello Mr. Benn ... Yes, yes. I know your wife’s book ... I’ll be here until the 19th. 11 on Sunday would be delightful. No. 12, right. I’ll be coming from Michael’s. By underground, yes.” I got to know Michael and Jill while researching my biography of Rebecca West. and Jill was quite helpful. Yes, I’d love to meet you. You can always reach me here. Thanks very much. Bye Bye.” I turned to Michael and said “That was easy.” “That’s good,” Michael said. “He’s just completing his diary he says. His diaries are more elaborate than any individual who has ever lived. He records every word.”
― Carl Rollyson, A Private Life of Michael Foot

“Recently Michael had encountered Salman Rushdie at a party given by Geoffrey Robertson, the lawyer who had secured Michael’s libel judgment against Rupert Murdoch’s Times. Jill and Michael had installed a new kitchen with the damages. Spotting Rushdie, Michael approached and said, “Salman, let’s have a meeting sometime soon without any kind of reference to Elizabeth [Rushdie’s estranged wife who remained Michael’s friend].” Rushdie agreed. “That was just before Christmas,” Michael noted. Rushdie said he would call Michael. But no call had come. Michael rationalised by saying Rushdie might have rung up while Michael was away for the holidays (Michael had no answering machine or fax). “What I’d like to do—if it’s okay with you—is you should have a talk with him.” Of course I was agreeable. I wrote to Rushdie, mentioning Michael’s fond memories of him. I never received a reply.”
― Carl Rollyson, A Private Life of Michael Foot

“I suddenly asked him, “Why do you think you lost the election in 55?” A long silence ensued. “Not quite sure,” he replied tersely several minutes later. Surely he lost because his views were out of sync with Plymouthians, a rather Conservative, even stuffy bunch, in Jill’s opinion.1 He did not dwell on defeat—a healthy attitude, no doubt, but I had to wonder if his failure to examine election results indicated a certain wilful blindness to political realities. Did Michael’s exuberant rhetoric grate on an electorate confronting postwar shortages, the shrinkage of the empire and housing problems? Labour was out by 1951 and perhaps the only surprise is that Michael lasted until 1955.”
― Carl Rollyson, A Private Life of Michael Foot

“Whoopee!” Michael said as his barbecued fish arrived. “Look at that! Amazing.” A meal was never just a meal; with Michael Foot it was a celebration. Nearly every mouthful got its own cry of satisfaction. I remembered, though, that on the boat he had been excited about the fishing and then sobered by seeing the fish pulled on board. He was going to eat it, but for that moment he did not like staring death in the face. Now, even with the whole fish—head and all on his plate, he devoured his delicacy without a qualm. While we talked, Michael put his head down and dug in. All he managed to utter, again and again, was “now, now, delicious.” Later I questioned him, “You’re not really against fishing, are you Michael?” “Well, not really, but every now and again I’m shaken.” Even after what I told you about Benjamin Franklin?” “Yes,” he insisted. I had told Michael the story from Franklin’s autobiography. Although he was a vegetarian, Franklin had been lured by the wonderful smell of sailors cooking fish aboard ship and had forsaken his principles, pointing out that he had watched the fish opened up and saw inside them smaller fish. He reasoned that if the bigger fish could eat the smaller fish, he could eat the bigger fish. “Good excuse that is,” Michael conceded, but he had read Brigid Brophy’s brief in favour of vegetarianism and been persuaded (mostly). “My father was a seaman,” I said to Michael gravely, “and it would be hard to convince me.”
― Carl Rollyson, A Private Life of Michael Foot

“Later that day Julie and I got into a conversation about authorised biography after I told her about Owen. “It [authorised biography] verges on autobiography,” she said. “Yes, it does,” I agreed. “You’re not going to be able to put in the shit,” she declared. But she fully understood my position. “There have been a number of cases,” I pointed out, in which biographers had signed agreements with estates stipulating they could not interfere “because the biographer is afraid that as in a romance, when the family falls out of love with you, then you’re stuck. But I just think that changes the atmosphere, to face Michael with a contract and say, ‘Sign this.’ I couldn’t do it.” Julie agreed, “I don’t think that would work with Michael. He would put his back up.”
― Carl Rollyson, A Private Life of Michael Foot

“A letter from Brian Brivati, Gaitskill’s biographer, led Michael to describe an incident at Porto Fino. On holiday there, Michael and Jill ran into Gaitskill, who was accompanied by one of Michael friends, Maurice Bowra, who had taught Gaitskill at Oxford. “We couldn’t walk properly because every time we’d be cut by Gaitskill,” who was evidently still sore about Michael’s harsh criticisms of his party leadership. Gaitskill and Co. would go off in another direction when they saw Michael and Jill approach. No word was exchanged between the two men for two days. On the third day, “Bowra came out to us, crossed the road and said, ‘I can’t let this go on any longer. I think they’re behaving stupidly toward you—whatever the arguments you have. I’ve told him I can’t be a party to that because we’re old friends.’” Michael and Gaitskill never did exchange words.”
― Carl Rollyson, A Private Life of Michael Foot

“Michael’s career as a government minister made him a target of the tabloids. The Daily Mail ran a series of articles claiming that during a hospital stay Michael had received special treatment. But Michael accepted only the care available to other NHS patients. “I didn’t like taking libel actions because I’m a journalist,” he noted. Indeed, he had had to defend himself in libel actions that resulted from his articles. But when the tabloid continued to publish false stories and refused to retract them, Michael sued, forcing the paper to pay him £6000 and issue an apology. “They went to every kind of length to prove that I was wrong ... They couldn’t get the nurses to say anything ... They’re swines [the tabloids], you know.”
― Carl Rollyson, A Private Life of Michael Foot

“On the question of the bomb,” said Michael, returning to the issue that trumped just about any other in his mind, “people say you should have done more when you were in the bloody government. I’m not saying they haven’t any case at all, although we were so interested in other things and getting on with them. I knew if we raised the question of, you know, unilateral disarmament in the Callaghan government, there was no hope. And so we didn’t raise it.”
― Carl Rollyson, A Private Life of Michael Foot

“On this visit there was much talk of my Gellhorn biography, which had just appeared and had received excellent reviews, with a few very negative ones, including a personal attack on me by one of Gellhorn’s friends, the journalist John Pilger. Michael wanted to know why. “Well, he said I wrote a salacious book,” I told Michael. Of course, it was nothing of the kind. Michael’s response was “Dirty sod. I tell you, I’ve got very strong feelings about him. The way he’s behaved over the breakup of Yugoslavia. It’s absolutely outrageous. Pilger bilge, I call it.”
― Carl Rollyson, A Private Life of Michael Foot

“Michael, by his own admission, was a hero-worshipper, and even when he admitted his hero’s faults, he could not seem to then re-factor his hero worship.”
― Carl Rollyson, A Private Life of Michael Foot

“At the Gay Hussar we had a brief discussion of a new biography of Indira Gandhi. Moni spoke against it, not because she had read it but because she had read negative reviews and because Sonia Gandhi had opposed it. Later Michael would take the same line, which I thought rather a poor show in a journalist and biographer. In some matters, Michael and his circle took a kind of partisan view of the world that boded ill for my own biography. Moni, in fact, would later intervene, imploring me not to publish the ‘Lamia’ story.”
― Carl Rollyson, A Private Life of Michael Foot

“Obviously fond of Jill, Paul remembered a time they were all together in a car arguing, and Jill whispered in Paul’s ear, “Michael thinks he can win an argument by how loud he shouts.”
― Carl Rollyson, A Private Life of Michael Foot

“Are you ready to answer some questions?” I asked Paul. He was quite willing to oblige. I asked him when he first met Michael. Paul’s earliest memory of Michael places him at the Foot family home in Pencrebar, just about the time of the 1945 general election: [PF] The only thing [of importance] to us was how many members of the family were going to get elected. The information we had was no chance for Michael. He was the black sheep. He had gone away from the family tradition. [CR] No longer a liberal. [PF] Serve him bloody well right. [CR] Teach him a lesson. [PF] Everybody else had a good chance of winning. [CR] Do you think his father felt that way? [PF] No. They didn’t actually say that. It was the banter. His mother was a bit that way. [MF] Ah! Not my mother. [PF] When Michael was in the first results and he’d won, it followed that everyone else would win by enormous majorities. All through the next days there were these terrible results: Dingle had lost in Dundee, and John lost in Bodmin and then the worst was grandfather in Tavistock. He just shut himself up in his room. He wouldn’t talk to anybody for about four days afterwards.”
― Carl Rollyson, A Private Life of Michael Foot

“Later that afternoon Michael and I paid a visit to Paul Foot. Watching them was always a treat. Michael got on to the subject of Jill’s horrible childhood and her terrible mother, who at one point put Jill in a Belgian convent. “That’s why Jill hated Belgians,” Michael pointed out. “I don’t mean to say she was racist or anything like that ... ” Paul interrupted, “No, she just hated Belgians.” We laughed. Michael just went on,”
― Carl Rollyson, A Private Life of Michael Foot

“We had a lengthy discussion of the difficulties I had had working on other biographies and the efforts made by Martha Gellhorn, Susan Sontag and others to prevent publication. Gellhorn’s representative, Bill Buford, sent a threatening letter to my publisher. Michael, a journalist first, called Buford a “dirty dog.” I never dreamed, then, that he, too, would, in the end, assume a rather high-handed attitude towards my manuscript, ordering me to make changes and deferring to the feelings of others. On this day, I said: “I don’t respond well to those threats. I don’t allow them to intimidate me.” “We don’t believe in authorised biographies,” Michael concluded. “All authorised biographies are hereby condemned.” I would remember these words later when Michael the Apostate appeared.”
― Carl Rollyson, A Private Life of Michael Foot

“Later in the evening, Michael spoke highly of Denis Healey’s efforts to maintain party unity during Michael’s brief tenure as leader. Denis had as much love for the party as he did, Michael emphasised and Healey even went out of his way after the 1983 defeat to say that Michael should not be saddled with all the blame.Healey and Michael certainly had their differences, but they worked well together, agreeing to approach Brezhnev and broker a deal that would ease tensions concerning the Cruise missiles in Britain and in other parts of Europe. Michael and Denis were concerned about an escalating Russian response. How to stop this super power competition? “We were protesting about it,” Michael said. “We talked to Brezhnev. We said, ‘What about a zero option? To have no new Cruise missiles on either side of Europe?’” The Tory government claimed the Russians rebuffed Foot and Healey and that “we’d made fools of ourselves,” Michael said. Douglas Hurd in the Foreign Office ridiculed the zero option proposal. “Two weeks later, Reagan came out and used the exact phrase, ‘Why not a zero option?’ The Foreign Office then changed its tune. We had a quite sensible foreign policy,” Michael added, “and we were treated as innocents who did not know what was happening in the bloody world.”
― Carl Rollyson, A Private Life of Michael Foot

“Ian wanted to know how I got Michael to talk about such matters and I explained what I had discovered in Jill’s diary and what she herself had said about the need for candour in biography. I also mentioned that four-minute silence in which Michael seemed to be calculating what to say. “I know those silences,” Ian said, laughing again. “It’s going to be a good book,” Ian told me. “I’ve learned more from you than you have from me,” he added. “I try to give good value,” I replied. “So Elizabeth was not the innocent thing I thought she was,” he marvelled. I suggested perhaps nothing would have happened if Michael had not taken the initiative. “He did?” Ian asked. “How do you know?” “Because I asked him,” I told Ian. “Michael is not the man we always believe him to be,” Julie said. “There are other sides to Michael Foot, “ I announced, “which is what one should learn in a biography.” Ian wondered aloud about what the Daily Mail would do with such a story. Both Ian and Julie cautioned me to have nothing to do with the tabloids; publishing there would set Michael off. “Michael Foot: A Sexual Life,” Ian said, and laughed. “Michael Foot in Love,” Julie countered. “There is a passion there, yes,” I agreed. “ I always thought his interest was academic,” Ian noted. “No, it ain’t,” Julie said.”
― Carl Rollyson, A Private Life of Michael Foot

“Tony sometimes talks as if he is the only just man. ... He’s a very persuasive speaker. You think he believes every word of it and I think he does, actually. That’s why he comes across. There’s no fake in it. But my impression is that his family—two or three of them—don’t agree with him. They don’t say it because they don’t want to hurt him. In the first cabinet where I was—who you sit next to is quite important—you see how the other chap operates. Of course, Tony had been in many cabinets ... Tony was on one side and Tony Crosland on the other. I got more fun out of it that way, I must say. Tony [Benn] was keeping his diary ... Crosland was an interesting chap. Quite a lot of arguments with Tony Crosland ... I had an argument with him on one occasion about Hazlitt because despite the fact I was in the bloody cabinet, I saw that it was Hazlitt’s two hundredth anniversary. They [the Times] asked me to do an article and I did it—this was before Murdoch had taken over. The next week [during a cabinet meeting] Tony Crosland says, “Fancy a chap who has time to write articles when he’s in the cabinet. We’re not like that. We have to get on with the bloody work.” I said, “Well, it so happens I’ve been waiting a long time to write that article. That’s my excuse.” But I got back on him because he produced a book called Socialism Now. Three or four weeks later [in cabinet] I said, “Socialism Now—that’s a wonderful title. We are trying to work on a decent incomes policy and here I read a book by you called Socialism Now. I’ve looked through it ten times. There’s no chapter on incomes policy.”
― Carl Rollyson, A Private Life of Michael Foot

“I asked Michael about Tony Benn, wondering if he would dilate on the figure who had given him so much trouble in his brief tenure as party leader. Benn’s wife, Caroline, had died just a few months before. She had got on with Jill. The two women shared an interest in women’s rights, and Caroline had authored a biography of Keir Hardie, one of the male heroes in the fight for women’s suffrage. Michael attended Caroline’s memorial service, an act Tony appreciated. “We’ve had a kind of reconciliation,” Michael said, “In this week’s Tribune, however, he’s written ... the same old stuff about Yugoslavia, which is all wrong and cock-eyed. So I’m going to write to him. He took the easy ways. He wouldn’t face the difficulties. But he’s got many virtues as well.”
― Carl Rollyson, A Private Life of Michael Foot

“[CR] Do you think John Smith would have done as well as Blair? [MF] Yes—better in some ways. He had better links with the Labour Party. There are some things he [Blair] seems to be careless about.”
― Carl Rollyson, A Private Life of Michael Foot

“[CR] I was reading another of your books in your library last night—Herbert Morrison’s autobiography. He’s got one paragraph on you. It’s the nastiest piece of business, calling you a TV personality. He doesn’t know if you have any influence on anyone and he refers to your election defeat in Plymouth. He loads it on. Do you remember that? [MF] Ernest Bevin is supposed to have said of Morrison when someone else said, “He’s his own worst enemy,” “not while I’m alive.” Michael had no other comment on Morrison. He rarely spent time on those he disliked.”
― Carl Rollyson, A Private Life of Michael Foot

“One of Michael’s favourite pastimes was hauling books down from his shelves and reading to me, or pointing out comments he had made on the flyleaves. The astringent Brigid Brophy never failed to amuse him. Her invective, he claimed, “would put anybody in a good temper. It’s my favourite cure for any kind of depression.” Michael read out a newspaper clipping reporting an apology concerning something Brophy had written that the press council deemed pornographic. A reader had complained about her article on Lucretius, the newspaper report noted: “Referring to the Latin language Ms. Brophy wrote, ‘yet, though non-colloquial Latin is rhetorical and declamatory because its sounds ooze forth, though its meaning has to be teased out, tension and internal contradiction are inherent in the language. I can’t believe it didn’t create in its users a psychological predisposition to tension like masturbating with one hand while playing chess with the other.” We roared. “It’s hard to beat. It makes me laugh like anything,” Michael said. He spoke of Brigid Brophy constantly. “It’s wonderful,” he chortled.”
― Carl Rollyson, A Private Life of Michael Foot

“The Thatcher/Major years, as far as Michael was concerned, had wrecked the world that the 1945 Labour landslide had inaugurated. Shortly after the incident with Major, Michael traveled to Manchester from his constituency in Wales. The trip required a change of trains in Abergavenny: I used to go down there when I first got to that part of the world—1930s in the Monmouth constituency was the first place I fought a campaign. Abergavenny was a nice little busy railway town—the best supporters of the Labour Party—a thriving little market town. When I turned up [at the railway station] two days after I heard Mr. Major in London announce we were to have a classless society—the whole place was absolutely deserted. The ticket office was closed. Everything was closed except the lavatory. The only thing that was working was the bloody condom machine with some posh title called Empire—Elite! That’s it! The only thing working in the Major station was the Elite Condoms. I didn’t need one at the time, I may say, but there you are. That was my introduction to Major’s classless society.”
― Carl Rollyson, A Private Life of Michael Foot