Uncensored Mulroney a Hit in Canada

by Nathalie Atkinson, PW Daily -- Publishers Weekly, 9/20/2005

The Secret Mulroney Tapes: Unguarded Confessions of a Prime Minister by Peter C. Newman, published by Random House of Canada, has been water cooler fodder across Canada since its headline-grabbing publication a week ago. The book consists mainly of candid conversations between the author and Brian Mulroney, former leader of the Progressive Conservative Party and Canada's Prime Minister from 1984 to 1993. Newman's 460-page hardcover features unexpurgated transcripts taken from 330 interviews (98 of them with Mulroney, on the record) and conversations from the over 20 years of access he had to the former Prime Minister and his entourage.

The sessions reveal an uncensored Prime Minister, often crude and profane, who makes sexist remarks about the country's first female Prime Minister, Kim Campbell, and exalts his own legacy, like lauding his role as 'broker' of the deal between Mikhail Gorbachev and George H.W. Bush that led to the fall of the Berlin Wall.

While Mulroney has not refuted the material in the book, a spokesman has said he feels "betrayed" and "devastated." Some are also calling the book opportunistic: Mulroney, 66, is still recovering from health problems after pancreatitis and lung surgery. But it may in fact whet public appetite for Mulroney's own memoirs, which McClelland & Stewart will publish next fall.

News of the book's publication broke in The Globe & Mail a week ago, along with excerpts in Maclean's magazine, and like the rest of the country, Mulroney first learned about it when he turned on the television news last Monday. That afternoon, Newman couriered a finished copy of the book to Mulroney's Montreal home. The book's existence was a closely guarded secret for the 18 months between acquisition and publication date (part defensive strategy to pre-empt legal action, part marketing plan); booksellers weren't even aware of the nature of the non-fiction book they were buying beforehand.

This week, Newman refutes accusations of opportunism with an open letter published in the national dailies, writ large with the headline “I Did Not Betray Mulroney.” Specifically, Newman outlines the terms of a letter of agreement signed in June 1983 wherein Mulroney granted Newman unrestricted access to the then-P.M. and his aides, along with exclusive access to his files and supporting materials during his tenure. All this was done with the aim to write a comprehensive political biography, Newman says, but Mulroney later reneged on the terms.

The publicity binge has been a boon to sales with Random going back to press for 20,000 copies following an initial print run of 45,000. Perhaps Mulroney himself said it best, as quoted by Newman in his recent rebuttal: "The only question [the publisher is] going to have to wonder about is whether they’ve got enough paper in the forest to print the fucking books, that's all they have to worry about. I'll tell you this, if there ain't a good book in this, there's not a good book in Canadian history."

Prophetic indeed, The Secret Mulroney Tapes is currently enjoying the number one spot at Amazon.ca. No plans has yet to publish Mulroney in the U.S.