Michael Foot, grandson of a Devon carpenter, son of a bibliophile Liberal MP, and himself an author and former Beaverbrook journalist, never expected to become leader of the Labour Party. He had been a left-wing MP for 30 years, a former editor of Tribune and often a rebel at odds with his party. Following the retirement of James Callaghan it took some persuading by his friends before he agreed to stand as a candidate for the Leadership. Even then only a few of his staunchest supporters expected him to defeat the favourite, Denis Healey.

          But on the second ballot Foot pipped Healey at the post and became only the sixth Labour Party leader since he had joined the party from the Liberals 46 years before.

          In MICHAEL FOOT: A PORTRAIT, the first biography of the Labour leader, Simon Hoggart and David Leigh show how Foot’s views today were influenced by his formative years in a household where radical politics were part of his upbringing. His father, Isaac Foot, five times elected Liberal MP for Bodmin between the wars, was also a memorable orator who accumulated a library of some 70000 books, traits that carried through to Michael, the third son. Three of his brothers also had notable careers: Hugh, the last Governor of Cyprus, became Lord Caradon; Dingle, later knighted, became Solicitor-General; and John, the only one of the quartet to remain a Liberal, is now Lord Foot.

          MICHAEL FOOT: A PORTRAIT traces Foot’s career through a Quaker public school to Oxford (he was President of the Union) and London, where he became a star in the Beaverbrook firmament on the Daily Express and Evening Standard (as editor). Seminal influences at this period were Sir Stafford Cripps and Aneurin Bevan; even a fiery redhead by the name of Barbara Betts (later Castle) passed through his life.

          The authors chronicle Foot’s subsequent career in Parliament, including his battles within the Parliamentary Labour Party and his eventual acceptance of ministerial office in 1974 during the third Wilson Government as Secretary od State for Employment. From rebel, the sea-green incorruptible, the Robespierre of British politics, he had, in the words of one columnist, "got responsibility". The man who so long carried the Ark of Labour’s socialist covenant, was on the way to becoming its leader.