Writing
He published his memoirs, DC Confidential, in November 2005, with extracts serialised in The Guardian and the Daily Mail. The book gave rise to considerable controversy. It was attacked by members of the Labour government, while a group of MPs urged him to “publish and be damned”. Meyer gave a detailed rebuttal of his critics in written evidence submitted to the House of Commons Select Committee on Public Administration. In 2005, the memoirs were included in his books of the year by Jim Hoagland, the authoritative Washington Post commentator on foreign affairs, who described them as “thorough” and “credible”.
In 2009 he published a second book, Getting Our Way, a 500-year history of British diplomacy that accompanied a BBC 4 television series of the same name. He was again in the news with this book, serialized this time in the Sunday Times and Daily Telegraph, and again openly critical of the Labour Government under which he served.
Meyer writes regularly on international affairs for a variety of newspapers and publications.
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Famous quotes containing the word writing:
“All writers are vain, selfish and lazy, and at the very bottom of their motives lies a mystery. Writing a book is a long, exhausting struggle, like a long bout of some painful illness. One would never undertake such a thing if one were not driven by some demon whom one can neither resist nor understand.”
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