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Books

The 'semi-detached' member of Margaret Thatcher's cabinet

John Biffen's memoir Semi-Detached reveals the Tory politician's struggle with mental illness — and a paranoid, vindictive and megalomaniac Maggie

18 January 2014

9:00 AM

18 January 2014

9:00 AM

Semi-Detached John Biffen

Biteback, pp.468, £30, ISBN: 9781849542395

John Biffen was mentally ill. This is the outstanding revelation of Semi-Detached, a memoir which has been assembled from his diaries and from the autobiographical writings which he completed before his death in 2007. During the mid-1960s he tried psychotherapy, which he described as ‘lugubrious’, ‘painful’ and ‘not a cure’.

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