Mendes had been scheduled to mount a production ofTwelfth Night. Then Whitby’s script landed on his desk and he put Shakespeare on hold. Great, except that it leaves the author exposed to the kind of media attention from which a toughened veteran might quail.Was Mendes right, then, in training such a powerful spotlight on this work The answer is a pretty clear “no”. Set in the closing weeks of the Great War, To The Green Fields And Beyond pulls off, for all its heavily researched realistic detail, the dubious trick of being, in essence, a “feel good” portrait of a British tank crew on the eve of battle. This is a pity because it approaches the subject from potentially interesting angles.It must, for example, be the first play about the Great War in which a soldier, out near the front, has claimed that “we are at the gates of a better world”. These are the paradoxical words of Dougray Scott’s Lieutenant Child, a left-wing Scot and former schoolteacher. Amid all the horror, he feels a kind of optimism about the huge advances in technology that this conflict has brought about and a pride in being part of the new élite.

The solidarity of his platoon, which has helped him survive against the odds, also hints at a socialist future. And, true to the actual constitution of some of these tank corps, Whitby’s play includes a West Indian and an Indian soldier.Mendes’ atmospheric production, set among moonlit birch trees, has a fine emotional director. But he cannot stop the proceedings from coming perilously close to the rainbow sentimentality of an “I’d like to teach the world to sing…” Coke advert. The crucial debate among the men about whether to duck the battle next day is softened by the fact that you never really believe that Whitby will risk forfeiting a heart-tugging close. And the dramatist makes life easy for himself with a suspicious, crudely characterised American spy, posing as a journalist, whose cynical view of Tommy platoons the men can systematically contradict.Keats said that we were right to dislike art that has “palpable designs on us”.

He would have loathed this piece, with its one-dimensional Belgian prostitute who is glad to do her bit for the war effort, its trowelled on “endearing” slang and its forced allusions to Blake, the Bible et al.Actors of the calibre of Ray Winstone and Finbar Lynch lend their distinction to a play that does not deserve it. One hopes that Mendes chooses his next film project more discerningly.. Andrew Rawnsley has been fortunate in the timing of his book’s publication. His good fortune is not so much that the book was used to give the Prime Minister and Chancellor a kicking when the Government was dropping in the polls. Rather, this sudden deflation illustrates perfectly his book’s thesis, such as it is: that the four men who make up the New Labour core – Tony Blair, Gordon Brown, Alastair Campbell and Peter Mandelson – are chronically insecure. Collectively, that could be seen as the gravest of their “psychological flaws”.

Andrew Rawnsley has been fortunate in the timing of his book’s publication. His good fortune is not so much that the book was used to give the Prime Minister and Chancellor a kicking when the Government was dropping in the polls. Rather, this sudden deflation illustrates perfectly his book’s thesis, such as it is: that the four men who make up the New Labour core – Tony Blair, Gordon Brown, Alastair Campbell and Peter Mandelson – are chronically insecure. Collectively, that could be seen as the gravest of their “psychological flaws”.
As would be expected of Rawnsley, one of the best current political columnists, Servants of the People is a well-written history of the Blair government’s first three years, laced with dry wit and anonymous quotations, some of which have caused a fuss out of proportion to their significance. The chapters on the euro, on foreign policy and on welfare reform are excellent analyses. The account of the confusion over the euro in autumn 1997 is unusually clear and suggests persuasively that Brown bounced Blair into, in effect, ruling out a referendum on monetary union during this parliament.On foreign policy, Rawnsley gives the Government more credit than is fashionable, rightly entering both Sierra Leone and the Pinochet affair on the “ethical” side of the ledger. His account of the farcical mismatch of Harriet Harman and Frank Field at social security is a good tale well told.And he fairly exposes the emptiness of Blair’s thinking on welfare reform: 1) He’s in favour.

2) …er, that’s it.The blaze of publicity that accompanied the book’s serialisation diverted attention from its attempt to gain perspective on Blair’s first term. Rawnsley has spoken to many of the best witnesses, including Blair himself (not that he would have said anything revelatory) but not Brown, and some of the anonymous quotations add texture. But his reliance on third-party reported speech means that some of the “dialogue” does not ring true, and the cloak of anonymity renders the whole exercise vulnerable to counter-attack.Nor does his description of his methodology sit well with the sanctimonious position taken by his newspaper, The Observer, and its sister, The Guardian, on anonymous sources. Private dialogue is based on a “trustworthy account” from participants or witnesses, “or from someone reliable to whom the content of the conversation was subsequently reported”.Nevertheless, the sense generally seems right, and confidence in the author is strengthened by his promise to “make my source material available” after Blair leaves office. Unfortunately for Rawnsley, though, Brown has emphatically repudiated the most controversial words attributed to him: the claim that Brown, after apparently denying, on radio, knowledge of Bernie Ecclestone’s donation, told his staff, “I lied.