As details of Peter Mandelson’s forthcoming autobiography, The Third Man, begin to emerge in this week’s papers, his former cabinet colleagues, perhaps anticipating the worst, are queuing up to condemn its timing and contents.
“Peter fell in love with himself at an early age,” claimed David Blunkett today in the Daily Mail. “His tragedy is that he rarely heeds the wise advice he gives others.”
But though the memoirs, which will be reviewed in the New Statesman next week, will cause consternation within the Labour Party, they are unlikely to match the following selection for public scandal. Below is our pick of the top five most controversial memoirs of recent years.
Which autobiographies have we missed? Tell us in the comment thread below.
A Million Little Pieces by James Frey (2003)
Thanks to its recommendation by Oprah Winfrey, this tale of its author’s vomit-caked years as an alcoholic, drug addict and criminal sold more than 3.5 million copies, sitting on top of the New York Times non-fiction paperback bestseller list for 15 weeks. But in January 2006, large sections of the books were exposed as fake. In his crassest flight from reality, Frey had even invented a role for himself in a deadly train accident that cost the lives of two female high school students.
My Son Marshall, My Son Eminem by Debbie Nelson (2008)
On his 1999 debut album, The Slim Shady LP, Eminem rapped: “my mom smokes more dope than I do/I told her I’d grow up to be a famous rapper/Make a record about doing drugs and name it after her.” Debbie Nelson responded by filing a lawsuit against her son, claiming the lyrics had caused hardcore fans to spit at her in the supermarket. She was awarded $25,000. In her memoir, Nelson took the opportunity to undermine her son’s austere pop persona, claiming he had an imaginary friend named Casper, that he was heavily bullied by classmates, and that he used to charge friends in his neighbourhood a quarter to watch him breakdance.
Speaking for Myself: the Autobiography by Cherie Blair (2008)
Published in May 2008 and roundly trounced in the press, the book contained unbridled criticisms of the then prime minister, Gordon Brown, who Blair said repeatedly put pressure on her husband to step down, as well as details of how her youngest son Leo was conceived only because she was too embarrassed to take contraception with her to Balmoral. The author was also heavily criticised by the family of David Kelly, the government expert at the centre of the Iraq war dossier row, for writing about his suicide.
Don’t Ever Tell by Kathy O’Beirne (2006)
In a harrowing tale of childhood brutality and sexual abuse, Kathy O’Beirne claimed of her upbringing: “The Devil himself could not have dreamed up a better hell.” She was, her book claimed, repeatedly abused by her father and incarcerated in Ireland’s Magdalene laundries. But shortly after publication, the writer was sued after five of her eight siblings claimed she had been unfair to her family, and that their sister’s “perception of reality has always been flawed”.
L’Innocente: an Autobiography by Lucie Ceccaldi (2008)
One of the biggest literary controversies of recent years involves the French novelist Michel Houellebecq. His international bestseller, Les Particules élémentaires — translated as Atomised in 1999 — included an barely disguised parody of his mother, Lucie, painted as a selfish nymphomaniac called “Ceccaldi”. In public, Houellebecq accused Lucie Ceccaldi of abandoning him to his grandparents as a baby so she could travel across Africa with her husband; in his book, “Ceccaldi” leaves her young son in an attic in his own excrement so she can enjoy a life of free love as part of a bizarre hippie cult.
So enraged was the author’s mother at the book that, in April 2008, aged 83, she hit back with her own memoir, L’Innocente, in which she wrote of her son: “This individual, who alas! came out of my tummy, is a liar, an impostor, a parasite and especially, especially, a little upstart ready to do anything for fortune and fame.”
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