James Macintyre’s biography of former Labour prime minister Gordon Brown arrives as Britain is indulging a soft-focus nostalgia for the 1990s and 2000s. Oasis have reformed, Gladiators is back on TV and teenagers are buying low-rise jeans, cargo trousers and baby tees on resale websites.
Labour is back in power, too, and Macintyre’s serious reassessment of Brown might be expected to ride some of that wave. But the book has been partly eclipsed by renewed scrutiny of Peter Mandelson, amid fresh revelations from the Jeffrey Epstein files.
