"In politics of all callings, the test of success or failure is so unsure that one is tempted to wonder whether there is such a thing as true political success at all: failure, or frustration, or reversal, seems so much to be the essence of any political career." – Enoch Powell
A lecture on the demands upon the office of Prime Minister and those who fill it.
Peter Hennessy is Attlee Professor of Contemporary British History at Queen Mary, University of London, and was recently elected a Fellow of the British Academy. Before joining the Department in 1992, he was a journalist for twenty years with spells on The Times as a leader writer and Whitehall Correspondent, The Financial Times as its Lobby Correspondent at Westminster and The Economist. He was a regular presenter of the BBC Radio 4 Analysis programme from 1987 to 1992. In 1986 he was a co-founder of the Institute of Contemporary British History. Professor Hennessey was Gresham Professor of Rhetoric between 1994 and 1997.
