What might have been
From Mr Christopher Ruane
Sir: Everybody's favourite fighter (not quitter), Peter Mandelson (Books, 11 May), provides an interesting overview of the transition in the office of Her Majesty's Secretary of State for Northern Ireland, as well as some perspective on how he saw his own fulfilment of that esteemed role. However, by its positioning in your usually superb review pages, I suggest that it falls short of one's expectations, devoting as it does only one sentence explicitly to the book ostensibly being reviewed — and that one a hypothetical suggestion of what Dr Mowlam might have written.
Perhaps when Mr Mandelson comes to write his memoirs, you will allow a reviewer to comment on their actual contents? Then again, perhaps what he might have written will prove to be of more interest in that context.
Christopher Ruane
New Haw, Surrey
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