The Complete Reflections: Conversations with Politicians

On the BBC radio show Reflections with Peter Hennessy, the preeminent historian of British political life interviewed leading figures from the UK’s governing parties during the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries. Bringing together transcripts of the collected interviews for the first time, The Complete Reflections features interviews the biggest names from the Thatcher era, the New Labour years, and the coalition government of the 2010s. 

In The Complete Reflections, Peter Hennessy and Robert Shepherd provide not only an overview of the past three decades of British politics but also delve into the minds of those at the forefront of public life during times of great change. Hennessy’s deep knowledge and understanding of the lives and motivations of his interviewees, along with the obvious esteem in which they hold their interlocutor, leads to frank and revealing conversations in which the subject is not an object but an equal, giving these exchanges a unique veracity. The results are portraits of high authority, in which interviews become the chronicles that endure above all others—nothing less than the first draft of history.

Peter Hennessy is the Attlee Professor of Contemporary British History at Queen Mary University of London. He is the author of several books, including the postwar trilogy Never Again: Britain 1945–51, Having It So Good: Britain in the Fifties, and Winds of Change: Britain in the Early Sixties. His most recent work is On the Back of an Envelope: A Life in Writing, also published by Haus. He is a fellow of the British Academy and an honorary fellow of St. John’s College, Cambridge. He sits in the House of Lords as an independent crossbench peer.

Robert Shepherd is a producer for radio and television based at Westminster. He is the author of Westminster: A Biography.