In The Winner, we meet a Wilson who is both pragmatic and principled, able to be flexible on certain issues, inflexible on others. Thomas-Symonds is an unashamed admirer of Wilson and his pragmatism, although he does try to tread a careful path in this well-researched and readable biography. For others, his pragmatism made him an excellent leader, someone who was not doggedly wedded to ideology but able to recognise the strengths in those that were. For some, he was the ultimate shapeshifter, a pragmatic politician whose principles, were he to hold any, were very well hidden from view. Wilson’s political reputation is difficult to pin down. It is certainly time for Wilson to be revisited, although there are already several excellent biographies of him, not least Ben Pimlott’s 1993 tome and Philip Ziegler’s authorised biography published in the same year. Nick Thomas-Symonds has previously written two very good biographies of Labour titans – Clement Attlee and Nye Bevan now he has turned his attention to Harold Wilson.
Harold Wilson, photographed in his study at home in Westminster, in 1986.
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