Sailing Close to the Wind: Reminiscences, by Dennis Skinner
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Sailing Close to the Wind: Reminiscences, by Dennis Skinner
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Dennis Skinner, the famed Beast of Bolsover, is adored by legions of supporters and respected as well as feared by admiring enemies. Fiery and forthright, with a prodigious recall, Skinner is one of the best-known politicians in Britain. He remains as passionate and committed to the causes he champions as on the first day he entered the House of Commons back in 1970. In an age of growing cynicism about politicians, the witty and astute Skinner is renowned as a brightly burning beacon of principle. He has watched Prime Ministers come and go - Heath, Wilson, Callaghan, Thatcher, Major, Blair, Brown - and yet remains uncorrupted by patronage and compromise. Cameron discovered Skinner's popularity when a public backlash forced the current PM to apologise in Parliament for calling Skinner a dinosaur who should be in a museum. Skinner at eighty has a unique take on post-war Britain. A combatant in the great social, industrial and political upheavals of the last half century, he's resisted telling his extraordinary story. Until now.
Sailing Close to the Wind: Reminiscences, by Dennis Skinner- Amazon Sales Rank: #3193266 in Books
- Published on: 2015-05-14
- Released on: 2015-05-14
- Original language: English
- Number of items: 1
- Dimensions: 7.75" h x 1.00" w x 5.13" l, .60 pounds
- Binding: Paperback
- 352 pages
Review Witty, tender and packed with anecdotes―Big Issue in the NorthSkinner's life . . . cried out to be recorded. In an era when politics has become increasingly bland and middle-class, there is marked shortage of working-class heroes―Observer
About the Author Dennis Skinner is the son of a miner sacked after the 1926 General Strike. Skinner, to the distress of his mother, and despite a Grammar School education, followed his dad down the pit. He was a Clay Cross and Derbyshire councillor before winning Bolsover for Labour in 1970, a seat he's held ever since. A former chairman of Labour, current member of the party's ruling National Executive Committee, Skinner's Parliamentary heckles and interventions are legendary. He was expelled so often from the Commons that suspension became an occupational hazard.
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3 of 3 people found the following review helpful. A Great Book by a Great Man By M. Khoury What a fantastic book by a remarkable man. In an age of cynicism about politicians worldwide, Dennis stands out as a man of principle in a sea of back-biting lightweights too afraid to take a stand on issues that affect us most. His record as an MP is one of dedication to the working class and to the weakest members of society, all while living by the code that you say what you mean and mean what you say. His book, though, is much more than a tome on the values he represents. It is, how else to say it, a really good book, fun to read, informative, and fascinating. Sailing Close to the Wind is an excellent read that keeps your interest throughout, and you can hear Dennis's voice as he regales the reader with stories of Margaret Thatcher, life as a child during World War II, and other people and events throughout his years in the public eye and before. I recommend this book without reservation not only for readers in Great Britain, but also for those here in the US who are looking for a straight-forward, interesting book by this one-of-a-kind man who is a loyal friend to the most neglected members of society on both sides of the Atlantic. As an aside, if you want to have some fun, you must watch videos of Dennis during Prime Minister's Questions. There are too many classic moments to list.
3 of 3 people found the following review helpful. Let's do the Time Warp again... By FictionFan Now in his eighties and still an active Labour Member of (the UK) Parliament, it seems to me as if Dennis Skinner has been around forever. Certainly he's been there since Parliament was televised, sitting in his usual seat beside the passage and making his famous quips at the opposition speakers...and sometimes those from his own party too. He claims that he didn't want to write this book of memoirs, but has finally given in to the requests of many people who have enjoyed his public speaking. Certainly the book's progress to publication seems to have been a difficult one - it has been delayed and delayed till it reached the stage that I wondered whether it would ever actually appear. At first, Skinner was shown as the sole author, then for a while the pre-order details said that it was to be co-written by Kevin Maguire, a left-wing journalist - but this finished version has reverted back to being credited to Skinner alone.All of which might help to explain why the book is, quite frankly, a bit messy. It's a cross between a rather patchy memoir and a statement of Skinner's political convictions, with occasional musings on other subjects, such as his love for London parks. That's not to say it's uninteresting - it is. Well, I'll narrow that down a little - it's interesting if you happen to be a left-wing UK political nerd who remembers the miners' strike and gets nostalgic over the thought of those halcyon days when we marched through the streets of wherever we happened to be at the time, shouting 'Maggie! Maggie! Maggie! Out! Out! Out!' Skinner is an unreconstructed socialist and proud of it. Following his father into the mines, he is of 'good working-class stock' (which was in fact the title the book was listed as at one stage of its production), and still sees himself very much as a class warrior. His hatred for the Conservatives is visceral and often expressed in terms not unlike a small boy calling nasty names. On the other hand, he is strangely unforthcoming about the changes in the Labour party over the decades - he surely must have hated and despised the New Labour 'project', but he keeps that pretty much under wraps, while making it clear he thinks it's well past time for Labour to get back to its roots.The thing is that politics has moved on so far from the seventies and eighties (whether for better or worse is for each person to decide for him/herself) and Skinner's views now come over as so out-dated, as does his manner of expressing them. (It may - or may not - have been acceptable to call a woman politician 'darling' in the seventies, but not so much today.) I would have agreed with him politically about 80% of the time in the Thatcher era, but those days, and the society that existed then, are gone, and won't be coming back. I felt at points as if I had accidentally stepped into a time-machine. Too much of the book is spent on him recounting his best insults - many of them were quite funny at the time (and many others were just childish), but I did start wondering if the tax-payers were paying for an MP or a comedian. However I felt that was more to do with the uneven structure of the book, than a real reflection on Skinner's career. He doesn't really say much about any of the committees he served on (I assume there were some) and the details he gives of the political highpoints of his career are too few and far between. He does go quite deeply into the miners' strike, obviously with a very strong bias towards the miners, and that was interesting. But the book is too heavily weighted to the Thatcher era - he glosses over the last Labour administration and then gets into his stride again with a series of childish personal insults about the current batch of Tories. (It always amuses me how both sides think the other side behaves badly - and it amused me how hoity-toity Skinner, the arch-insulter, got when Cameron hurled a couple in his direction. Wouldn't it be great to have a few adults in politics for a change?)Overall, I found this in parts interesting, in parts annoying, and as a whole, too unstructured to be completely satisfying. I can't imagine it appealing to many people outwith the Old Labour tradition, but for them I'm sure it will be an essential read, as it was for me. If for no other reason than that it gives us the chance to do the Time Warp again...
0 of 0 people found the following review helpful. great book by a great man who stuck to his ... By Bruce Reginald Stanley Lee great book by a great man who stuck to his princibles and beleifs. a man who thought of the people not the money, a man who was honest through and through. he refused to react against the Tories for years when they baited him for going to Russia many times, yet when the right person Thatcher stood and accussed him of the same crime he asked her as the person who should know as she was the leader of Britain how did he get there as he has never had a passport, he waited years for that and really made it count. i was at Durham Miners Gala when Neil Kinnock leader of labour whenhe did a similar thing and he and the people let Kinnock know what they thought about him.Skinner was from the masses and never forgot them, a clever man and an honest man.Bruce Lee New Zealand.
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