McManus, Michael 1967–

PERSONAL: Born 1967; son of Noel (a local government officer) and Anna (Dunavári) McManus. Education: Attended Winchester College and Lincoln College; University of Oxford, degree (first class honors), 1990. Politics: Tory (Conservative Party). Hobbies and other interests: Playing sports, listening to music.

ADDRESSES: Home—c/o Vote 2004, 7 Tufton St., London SW1P 3QB, England. E-mail—soundofgunfire@yahoo.co.uk.

CAREER: Writer and civil servant. Worked as special adviser to British government ministers, 1992–95; head of private office to Sir Edward Heath, 1995–2000; Conservative Party candidate for Watford, 2001.

MEMBER: Soho House (London, England).

WRITINGS:

Jo Grimond: Towards the Sound of Gunfire, Birlinn (Edinburgh, Scotland), 2001.

WORK IN PROGRESS: A "Life and Times" of Victor Hochhauser, the impresario; a novel and associated script treatment, cowritten with English actor Nicholas Courtney.

SIDELIGHTS: Michael McManus is a Conservative Party member and former candidate who has written a biography of liberal Scottish Member of Parliament (MP) Jo Grimond, titled Jo Grimond: Towards the Sound of Gunfire.

Grimond was a colorful figure who came from a well-off family in St. Andrews, Scotland, and was educated at Eton and Oxford. He was a lawyer with a fine war record and served as secretary of the Scottish National Trust. He eventually married Laura Bonham-Carter, granddaughter of former Prime Minister H. H. Asquith. He was an officer during World War I, becoming a major, and he subsequently worked in the refugee program of the United Nations following the war.

Hoping to serve as an elected official, he lost in a bid for a seat in the 1945 general election, but was successful in 1950. In 1956 he became the leader of the Liberal Party. Shortly afterwards, the Liberal Parliamentary Party fell to only five members, an historic low, but their number doubled over the period of Grimond's leadership, which ended in 1967. He was made for television, a medium in its infancy when he entered politics and which he used to good advantage. Several of his allies came from backgrounds similar to his own, a case in point being his brother-in-law Mark Bonham-Carter, but he spent most of his time during election campaigns (all but one day in 1959) with the people he represented on the islands of Orkney and Shetland, a decision for which he was criticized. He campaigned somewhat harder in succeeding elections.

Successor Jeremy Thorpe was able to build on Grimond's successes and garnered for the party nineteen percent of the vote in the general election of February 1974. Grimond continued as an MP for many years, despite suffering from a decline in his hearing, and retired in 1983, when he took a seat in the House of Lords. He remained something of an icon among his long-time supporters, many of whom regard him as the founder of the Modern Liberal Party and, by extension, today's Liberal Democrats.

New Statesman contributor Iain Dale wrote that "McManus's task was perhaps harder than most, as his subject was leader of a political party with which, as a former Tory parliamentary candidate, he can have had little sympathy. He has produced one of the best-researched political biographies I have read. If anything, the reader is provided with too much information about a politician who never actually scaled the great heights of British politics."

Chicago's Tribune Books critic Edward Pearce commented that "The English like their betters, and Grimond was what cringing Cockneys call a real gent…. His thinking was close to the economic side of Enoch Powell as picked up by Margaret Thatcher. But he was calm where Powell was fraught, and lazily relaxed where Thatcher was driven and dripping with class hatred. But to take up the old and supposedly discredited and see its strengths was a reflection of a very good and lucid mind." Pearce noted that during his leadership, as well as over a much longer period, Grimond was known for his dislike of racial prejudice and apartheid and he avoided condemning homosexuality in a time when his view was in opposition to most. "Grimond might have been privileged and rich," wrote Pearce, "but one thing could not be charged. He was very much the liberal he said he was."

Eoin Scott wrote in an online review for Orkney Book Reviews that McManus's book "is full of humour and, for instance recounts the 1959 election, when Magnus [Grimond's son] was a baby in a Moses basket. Laura had him at many campaign meetings but took the precaution to have the basket labeled just in case he went missing."

In Jo Grimond McManus writes of Grimond's love of his garden and nature, particularly birds, and of his wife's contributions to public life and conservation. "The book is an easy read," said Scott, "filled with detailed but interesting accounts of Joe's life, both private and public." Scott called Jo Grimond "frank and sympathetic in its approach, using many humorous quotes and incidents during a long political career, and clearly the author benefited greatly from visiting both Orkney and Shetland to glean information on Jo the family man." Mark Garnett, writing in the Times Literary Supplement, noted that McManus "is a surprising biographer for Grimond, but he has undertaken his task with obvious enthusiasm and researched his subject thoroughly."

BIOGRAPHICAL AND CRITICAL SOURCES:

PERIODICALS

New Statesman, March 4, 2002, Iain Dale, review of Jo Grimond: Towards the Sound of Gunfire, p. 55.

Spectator, June 8, 2002, Alan Watkins, review of Jo Grimond, p. 47.

Times Literary Supplement, October 25, 2002, Mark Garnett, review of Jo Grimond, p. 30.

Tribune Books (Chicago, IL), January 18, 2002, Edward Pearce, review of Jo Grimond.

ONLINE

Orkney Book Reviews Web site, http://www.orcadian.co.uk/ (January 4, 2004), Eoin Scott, review of Jo Grimond.