A Different Kind Of Weather: A Memoir

Why did you go into politics in the first place?' A question that former Cabinet minister has found himself asked, and indeed asking himself, over the years, Lord Waldegraves is a life lived through politics. The youngest of seven children, and the son of an earl, Waldegraves quintessentially English upbringing would go on to shape the course of his life, instilling in him a sense of independence and selfdiscipline needed to steel one for a successful career in government. Formative years spent at Eton, Oxford, and Harvard fortified his resolve to enter the political establishment, and by the early 1970s he finally achieved his greatest ambition. As an fearless young Conservative politician in the 1970s and 1980s, one who witnessed the fall of Heath and the triumph and eventual decline of Thatcher, Waldegrave was firmly at the heart of one of the most exciting and tumultuous periods of modern British history. However just as his star was in the ascent, Waldegrave became embroiled in a scandal which tarnished his reputation, but could not dampen his voracious enthusiasm for the political game. An unembroidered account of the narcotic effect of politics from one of the most fiercely intellectual governmental figures of the modern age, A Different Kind of Weather is a beautifully weighted memoir of political success and failure, and the passing of an era.