“We started the project as biographers and ended it as political obituaries,” sighs James Heale. The British journalist comes out of ten grueling weeks, in the company of his colleague Harry Cole, of the tabloid The Sun.
The sequence begins on August 20 with the signing of an exciting publishing contract. The subject of the book: Liz Truss, big favorite in the race to succeed Boris Johnson. His victory over Rishi Sunak in the consultation of conservative activists is then beyond doubt. The title of the biography is already defined: Out of the Blue : The Astonishing Rise of Liz Truss (“Out of nowhere. The meteoric rise of Liz Truss”). “We were given two months to write it, specifies James Heale in the columns of the conservative weekly The Spectator, who employs him. But we had no idea that events would take this turn.”
Iconoclastic instincts
The trajectory of their joint work follows that of the fallen Prime Minister. First, the enthusiasm. In the dusty archives of Oxford, where the curator studied, in the heart of London