NewsHound

Vince Cable is working on a novel

By | Thu 24th December 2015 - 3:35 pm

According to the Daily Fail, Vince Cable is working on a novel, a political thriller:

Cable, 72, is already deep into the tome, having already bashed out 40,000 words.

It will apparently be a political thriller, set around a controversial arms contract affecting India and Britain. Details thus far are scant, but a friend informs me the prose will be quite ‘pared-back and spare’, in the style of Irish novelist William Trevor. Cable certainly has insight into Anglo-Indian relations, not just because he is a former government minister. His first wife Olympia, who passed away in 2001, was Goan. ‘I am indeed well advanced on a novel,’ Cable tells me sheepishly. ‘But there are a few hurdles before it gets to publication stage.’

Paddy Ashdown apparently had a 120,000 novel turned down for publication. We’d be happy to serialise it, of course…

I trust Vince’s new calling as a potential Man Booker Prize winning novelist fares rather better than his Lib Dem colleague, former leader Paddy Ashdown, who had a 120,000-word novel turned down by his agent earlier this year.

My agent looked at me quite sadly and said: “Paddy, you can write good history books, but you can’t write thrillers. Give it up — stick with what you can do,” ’ Ashdown told me recently.

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2 Comments

  • Richard Underhill 26th Dec '15 - 9:40am

    NewsHound | Thu 24th December 2015 – 3:35 pm What language is Paddy writing in? English ? French? He addressed federal conference once in what was presumably Mandarin, with an interpreter in the audience translating into English.

  • Richard Underhill 4th Apr '16 - 11:43pm

    Vince Cable was on BBC2 Newsnight on 4/4/16. Action can be taken on the most egregious tax evasion and was taken in respect of the Turks and Caicos Islands. The PM could do more. He has a lot to say, so the interviewer should interrupt less.

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