This is an amiable memoir, from a very amiable politician.[1] Everyone is “a nice guy.” Almost no one, no opponent, no leader of any other country except Saddam Hussein, is not “a nice guy,” and like a children’s prize day, almost everyone gets a superlative. Lee Kuan Yew was the smartest, Bill Clinton politically the cleverest, George W. Bush the most principled; Nicolas Sarkozy the most energetic; Paul Keating the most entertaining (undoubtedly true, even over apparent runners-up Silvio Berlusconi and Deputy Prime Minister John Prescott—strong contenders certainly). Ariel Sharon was the toughest; with that strange British weakness for scatology, Blair pronounced Sharon “someone who could make the shit go back up the bull’s bottom.” Condoleezza Rice is, perhaps, the most decent.

His selections and prize-givings are fair, from my limited acquaintance with most of the recipients. Politicians do tend to be affable or they don’t win elections, and Tony Blair is a very gracious and companionable, as well as a successful, politician. Apart from Margaret Thatcher, he is the only British prime minister to win three consecutive full-terms since the expansion of the electorate in the first Reform Act of 1832, the only leader in the history of the Labour Party to be consecutively reelected to full terms at all, and one of the very few British party leaders never defeated in a general election, personally or as leader. But it is a little like reading or speaking with Donald Trump: everyone and everything is great.