Melville House Books

Tony and Cherie Blair's Christmas card

A Guardian column by Esther Addley analyzes the Christmas card photo of Tony and Cherie Blair — wherein, out of office, they pose not in the governmental majesty of 10 Downing Street, but against a book case full of books. So, beyond the fact that neither one of them knows how to smile as if they mean it, and beyond “their expensively relaxed fashion choices,” and even their “dazzling and perhaps suspiciously regular dentistry,” what does the photo reveal? What they’re reading, of course: Anthony Beevor‘s Berlin: The Aftermath 1945, which, as Addley notes, “offers further advice on recovering from disastrous wars.” Works by Edna O’Brien, Amartya Sen, Carl Hiaasen, and childrens’ author Nancy Bond. And then there’s: “A volume called Nor Shall My Sword might be the 1972 work by FR Leavis subtitled ‘Discourses on Pluralism, Compassion and Social Hope’, but would appear to bear rather more resemblance to the ‘bracing’ work of the same title by the former Daily Mail columnist Simon Heffer, a man rarely distinguished by his affection for the Blairs, in which he argues for the immediate break-up of the Union”

Dennis Johnson is the founder of MobyLives, and the co-founder and co-publisher of Melville House.