“Politics is a tough business,” the Labour politician Roy Hattersley once wrote, “and the proper response to assaults and abuse from the wilder shores of socialism is neither surrender nor retreat. It is a determination to take the ideological battle into enemy territory.”
Politics was Hattersley’s greatest love, but it was far from his only career. His friends reckoned that he had written more books than most authors, done more journalism than many journalists and attended more Sheffield Wednesday football matches than most fans – without compromising his commitment to his constituency and the Labour party.
