Sarah Vine – How Not to Be a Political Wife

Sarah Vine, in conversation with Iain Dale, reflects on nearly twenty years spent close to the centre of political life during a defining period in modern Conservatism. How Not to Be a Political Wife is an unflinching account of life at the heart of politics, and what it’s like to have politics rip the heart out of your life. It’s a story of high hopes and dirty tricks, broken friendships and divided loyalties, laughter and glamour. Vine explores how those years shaped both her professional world as a journalist and her private life, touching on class, ambition, loyalty, and the emotional cost of being both an observer and a participant in frontline politics. As she writes, she was “both an insider and an outsider… a participant in the cut and thrust (mainly cut) of frontline politics.” Hailed as ‘the political memoir Westminster was dreading,’ the Daily Mail columnist’s explosively honest and razor-sharp book charts her experiences of observing the country’s political elite from close proximity when married to Conservative bigwig, Michael Gove.