First Confession: A Sort of Memoir

Most politicians write autobiographies to 'set the record straight' and provide retrospective justification for their careers. That is not the case with this book.

Chris Patten's career has taken him from the outer London suburbs to the House of Commons, a seat in the Cabinet, last Governor of Hong Kong, Chairman of the BBC and Chancellor of Oxford University. About all of these he is enlightening and entertaining.

He has unexpected and telling things to say about each of the three Prime Ministers for whom he worked - Edward Heath, Margaret Thatcher and John Major, but his political heroes - Baldwin, Macmillan, Butler - came from an earlier time.

Patten uses each phase of his life as a spur to reflect upon its contemporary situation - education, America, conservatism, Ireland, China, Europe and finally the question of links between violence and religion. Unlike one No.10 press secretary, Patten definitely 'does God'.

By the end, the reader has an impression of someone who knows himself as well as any of us can, and who continues to think, passionately and intelligently, about the world around him.

Wise, funny and opinionated, First Confession is a different sort of memoir, a meditation on personal and political identity which, in an age of simplification, reminds us of the complexities of both.