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Anthony Seldon's first study of Tony Blair, published in 2004, which took his story from birth up to the second term, has now become the conventional wisdom about Blair: a figure whose rise was shaped heavily by powerful individuals and events, and who squandered his early years in office because he had yet to work out what he wanted to do with power, and to stand fully on his own feet.


Blair Unbound, written with Peter Snowdon and Daniel Collings, takes the story from 2001 until how Blair matures as a political leader, finds his voice and personal agenda at home and abroad, and divests himself of the figures who had helped him rise to power but then held him back. Critical in this transformation is 9/11, which put iron in his soul, and fired him with the vision of becoming a world leader.


Blair Unboundis the best-sourced book to be written on a recently departed British Prime Minister. It is based on 2 million transcribed words of interviews with figures at the heart of the courts of Tony Blair, Gordon Brown and George W. Bush, and on a wide array of unpublished documents. It is scrupulously fair to all sides in the battles at the heart of government, whose ferocity was unlike anything seen before in British political history. It tells the inside story of the tempestuous Blair-Brown relationship, which was at its nadir between 2001 and 2007; Number 10 and White House decisions
over war in Iraq and Afghanistan; the inside story of the response to 9/11, 7/7 and other terrorist attacks; the first detailed account of the Northern Ireland peace process; the plots to oust Blair; and paints a candid and compelling picture of life within Number 10. In its detail, depth and judgements, so soon after its subject's departure from office, Blair Unbound is unique in the annals of contemporary history and political biography.


ABOUT THE AUTHOR:

Anthony Seldon is a political historian, biographer and commentator on British political leadership as well as on education and contemporary Britain. He is also Master of Wellington College, one of the country's leading independent schools, was formerly head of Brighton College, and was co-founder and first Director of the Institute of Contemporary British History. He is the author or editor of some twenty five books, including the authorised life of John Major, which remains the definitive account of Major's seven years at Number 10, and the highly acclaimed first volume of his biography of
Tony Blair (2004).

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