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Andy Beckett is a Guardian columnist. He has also written for the Economist, The New York Times magazine, the London Review of Books and the Independent on Sunday. His previous books are Promised You A Miracle, When the Lights Went Out and Pinochet in Piccadilly.
Vividly detailed and often gripping -- Joe Moran * The Guardian * A breath of fresh air: a vivid eye for detail meets narrative pacing that seems effortless... As a character study, and as an evocation of Britain in the last century, it would be worth reading even if you had no particular interest in the subject matter...a masterclass in teasing out complex stories of simultaneous failure and success -- Morgan Jones * LabourList * This is a premier account… a group biography of how ‘five heretics’… came out of the politics of the 1970s to upend the politics of the 2010s… Beckett is funny on the own goals and gaffes of a wide spectrum of the British media during years that they did not understand… There is no shortage of bleak lessons for the Left whilst reading The Searchers, but some causes for hope -- Fergal Kinney * Tribune * Andy Beckett’s compelling history of the five politicians who made that movement in Britain… Beckett tells a good human story about five politicians he rightly identifies as more easily mythologised than understood, and more often than not derided and excluded by their colleagues… Neither left nor right are honest enough often enough about these people, and more’s the pity: understanding what they have achieved requires the sort of untypical, bracing honesty that Beckett applies so artfully here, having spent plenty of time listening and speaking to these politicians — as too few of his journalistic colleagues have… The Searchers should be studied closely by anyone with a stake in British politics -- Patrick Maguire * The Times * An absorbing history of Labour’s radical left from the late 1960s to its present marginalisation -- Jason Cowley * Observer * PRAISE FOR PROMISED YOU A MIRACLE: 'Lively, provoking, bracingly anti-nostalgic.' -- Hilary Mantel An anthology of an age . . . A book that offers so much pleasure and insight. -- Ian Jack * Guardian * Intelligent, entertaining, readable, convincing and timely. It is history well told and properly done. -- Daniel Finkelstein * The Times *
