A Life at the Center: Memoirs of a Radical Reformer

Roy Jenkins is one of the most important statesmen of our time. He has been a British cabinet minister and party leader as well as a former president of the European Commission. He is now the chancellor of Oxford University. As an ardent Atlanticist, Jenkins has maintained close contacts with the United States throughout his career, helping to forge the links that have characterized the "special relationship" between the United States and Britain. A Life at the Center includes Jenkins's impressions of some of the celebrated people he has encountered - portraits that are often telling vignettes. He writes of the Kennedys, Truman, and Nixon, of LBJ and Margaret Thatcher, of Helmut Schmidt and J. Edgar Hoover, in a revealing and often hilarious way. In this acclaimed autobiography, the two strands of his life, writing and politics, are brought together triumphantly. Jenkins illuminates the people and politics of his times with grace, honesty, and humor. He writes candidly about his career, which was characterized in Britain by pioneering reform and struggles with the country's ailing economy. Jenkins might have been prime minister twice: in the seventies, when he seemed to be Harold Wilson's natural successor; and in the eighties, when the breakaway Social Democrats looked as though they might sweep straight into power. His presidency of the European Commission came at a crucial time, and he was instrumental in creating the European Monetary System, a cornerstone of European integration. He details these periods of strife and opportunity with his historian's insight, coupled with a quality of analysis rare in a work of this kind.