Book review: Roy Jenkins: A well-rounded life

THE best political biographies do more than record their subjects’ lives.

They are lenses through which we can understand current politics. John Campbell’s biography of Roy Jenkin’s is a rich and well-crafted account of Jenkin’s life and career. It also reveals much about the problems of contemporary British party politics.

Jenkins was a leading Labour party MP through their long period of opposition in the 1950s and 1960s. He was a senior minister under Harold Wilson in the late 1960s. As secretary of state at the home office he oversaw the liberalisation of laws on homosexuality and abortion. As chancellor of the treasury he did a reasonable job in ameliorating the UK’s economic decline after the devaluation of Sterling in 1967.