One vagrant afternoon on the quais in Paris, I came across a bookstall specialising in inter-war novels. When I asked the bookseller (a “bouquiniste” to the locals) whether he stocked any works by Pierre Drieu La Rochelle, a quiz ensued. What was Drieu’s best book? Name three others. Was his fate just? Only after passing that test did the bookseller deign to bring up a box of aged, tattered books and give me what I had asked for. Wryly, he then remarked that the only other customer ever seeking out Drieu’s stories was the President of the Republic, François Mitterrand.
Some might deplore Mitterrand’s taste: too retro (back to his adolescent days in the 1930s); not the standard French classics (Drieu was extremely talented, but a quasi-fascist, vehement in his denunciations, suicided at the Liberation); should have been working on official papers instead of reading too much. What, though, should our leaders read? What books suit for what Jane Austen called “occupation for an idle hour and consolation in a distressed one”?
That particular President was a literary omnivore, eclectic and eccentric in his choices, determined to construct a new national library (one which could have been better placed and planned) as his monument. Like generations of political leaders, Mitterrand likely started with the true political classics. That entails reading Thucydides (rather than Herodotus), Tacitus (instead of Suetonius), Machiavelli (sadly, over Castiglione), Sun Tzu (not Mao), Madison in preference to Jefferson.
Each of those authors combined a deep understanding of power with a rich awareness of human nature. They saw events more clearly, and saw through us as well. We diminish the term “classic” all the time, but even the most modern of those texts has endured and inspired for two-and-a-half centuries. As for Thucydides, his History of the Peloponnesian War has actually lived up to one of the most audacious of literary boasts, being designed “not to meet the needs of the immediate public, but … done to last forever”.
A didactic, self-improving reading list is easy to confect.
Abraham Lincoln chose another path to the getting of wisdom, immersing himself in deep dives into Shakespeare and the Bible, discovering moving language, cadences, poignancy and a sense of tragedy more than any moral lessons. Lincoln learned what he was talking about, and how to express himself, in contrast to those political observers who crudely appropriate some authors as tag lines. They mis-characterise matters as Kafkaesque (weirdly off-key), Orwellian (eerily sinister), Dickensian (shamingly cruel) or Shakespearian (riddled with fatal flaws and endings foretold). Biblical, now, has been down-graded to mean merely on a large scale.
Harold Macmillan, one of many erudite but weak British Prime Ministers, liked to claim that he went to bed with a Trollope. He meant a novel by Anthony Trollope, inventor of the red post box and author of long, mannered, cynical tales about Westminster politics. Macmillan could have done much worse; few more recent books (Trollope’s Palliser series is about 150 years old) offer our leaders either occupation or consolation.
A didactic, self-improving reading list is easy to confect. Worry about climate change: read Tim Flannery. Fret about authoritarianism: try Anne Applebaum. Grow out of liberal economics, with Thomas Piketty. Peek into dystopia: open a Michel Houellebecq. Reading thrillers would do more to replenish a leader’s batteries; John Kennedy was happy to acknowledge the nocturnal boost which James Bond novels gave him. If leaders still hankered for more serious literary fiction about how politics works, then Tom Mallon is to hand with his astute, skewed perspectives on Watergate, Tom Dewey and Ronald Reagan. For an extra dose of gritty cheekiness, Saba Imtiaz’s Karachi, You’re Killing Me is hard to beat.
Fiction diverts, while history instructs. Reading for grown-ups may involve spending some more settling, pondering time with those classics. Unlike polls and social media, they teach humility.
Any thorough examination of leaders’ reading habits should also encompass how they actually read. That does not mean fabricating an ideal environment: log fire, good light, snow outside, tumbler of Scotch. Rather, the key would be checking whether the books are scribbled on, underlined, argued with, with their spines cracked and pages dog-eared. Weirdly, Joseph Stalin would have passed that test with ease. Others might struggle.
The Book of Ecclesiastes exaggerates but does remind us that “of making many books there is no end, and much study is a weariness of the flesh”. If our leaders were exhausted by reading but still sought guidance, then other media might help. To appreciate the depth of contempt for politicians among the public, they could scrutinise Repin’s wonderfully scabrous painting, “Reply of the Zaporozhian Cossacks”. For a lesson in political purpose, after a couple of hours of comic entertainment, the final speech in “The American President” is perfect. Finally, to see the people as one, happy and united - somewhere outside a mirage or a campaign advertisement – tune in to the last night at the Proms.
