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"Thirty Days: An Inside Account of Tony Blair at War"
by Peter Stothard
Perennial, 244 pp., $13.95

Much ink has been spilled trying to capture the essence of Tony Blair. Peter Stothard's Thirty Days attempts to go where the biographies, cabinet tell-alls, and tabloid exposés have been unable to tread: inside Blair's inner circle of advisers. Stothard, a former editor of the Times of London, was granted unparalleled access to the prime minister and his staff during what was perhaps the most momentous month of Tony Blair's seven years in power. Items on the agenda during this period included deal making at the United Nations before the war, the war's early stages, and the political fallout in Britain.

Stothard's account is occasionally more diary than book. He spends much time discussing the setting in which meetings take place, down to the photos on Blair's desk or the fashion choices of Blair's colleagues on weekends: Hilary Armstrong "has abandoned her grandmotherly office gray for a soft cream leather jacket. John Reid is in leather too, harder and black. Gordon Brown is wearing a black-and-white rugby shirt. Sally Morgan is in a blue sweater." Once you get past these atmospherics, however, Tony Blair is revealed in these pages as a man sure of his mission and steadfast in his support for the United States. He masterfully thwarts cabinet defections and rebellious MPs, while enduring French obstruction at the United Nations and in Brussels.

We will need to wait for Tony Blair's memoirs to learn which factors were uppermost in his mind when he put his political career on the line in the spring of 2003, while a skeptical Britain protested outside his window. Stothard suggests that Blair's "powerful Christian seriousness" is a factor, contributing to his close relationship with President Bush, who shares his moral certainty about the world.

This may be true, but it is likely that the answer is more straightforward. Blair respects America in a way uncommon in Europe. As he explained in his moving address to a joint session of Congress last year, "Our job, my nation that watched you grow, that you fought alongside and now fights alongside you, that takes enormous pride in our alliance and great affection in our common bond, our job is to be there with you."