Barbara Castle Books

'Barbara Castle's diary shows more about the nature of Cabinet government than any previous publication...it is compulsive reading.' London Review of Books. Mrs Castle has now abridged her original two-volume text for this one-volume edition to offer a concise yet comprehensive and controversial day-by-day account of her experience as a Cabinet Minister in the Labour governments of Harold Wilson and James Callaghan. With characteristic frankness and a sharp cutting-edge of wit, she throws revealing new light on colleagues and opponents.

As a politician of the first rank in the Labour Party, a pioneering woman in the corridors of power, and a major force in Europe's Parliament, Barbara Castle is one of the most outstanding personalities in political life in recent decades. A key figure in post-war politics (Chairman of the Labour Party, Minister in the Wilson and the Callaghan governments), author of the "Castle Diaries" and "In Place of Strife", she here writes her memoirs with frankness, from her childhood memories of the first Labour government up to the present day.