It’s always hard for a beloved actor to know when to leave the stage. So no wonder that political diarist Chris Mullin was tempted by one last encore, covering the dozen years from his leaving parliament in 2010. Three terrific previous volumes had already established this campaigning journalist turned Labour minister as one of the great political diarists, proof that it is not the big beasts but their wickedly observant juniors who often offer the most incisive take. Doubtless he was inspired, too, by his friend Tony Benn’s late memoir A Blaze of Autumn Sunshine, whose title he borrows to describe the bliss of semi-retired life.
The fourth instalment opens gently enough with Mullin living in rural Northumberland, still keeping up intermittently with old friends both Labour and Tory: a legal battle with the police, over his determination to protect the sources for his groundbreaking 1980s reporting on the wrongful convictions of the so-called Birmingham Six, adds a frisson of drama. But these days he observes politics from a distance, in between tending the garden. (“Theresa May has at last announced her intention to resign. This evening we harvested the first strawberries from the greenhouse,” reads a typical entry).
