{"id":63649,"date":"2025-08-12T23:02:03","date_gmt":"2025-08-12T23:02:03","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/63649\/"},"modified":"2025-08-12T23:02:03","modified_gmt":"2025-08-12T23:02:03","slug":"frankly-by-nicola-sturgeon-review-the-ex-first-minister-opens-up-autobiography-and-memoir","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/63649\/","title":{"rendered":"Frankly by Nicola Sturgeon review \u2013 the ex-first minister opens up | Autobiography and memoir"},"content":{"rendered":"

When the title of Nicola Sturgeon\u2019s memoir, Frankly, was first announced, I had my doubts. Partly, of course, it was a touching nod to her late friend, the comic Janey Godley. Godley\u2019s viral Twitter voiceovers<\/a> of the first minister of Scotland\u2019s press conferences always ended with the catchphrase: \u201cFrank, get the door!\u201d<\/p>\n

As a reporter covering her decade in power, however, I\u2019d always found her to be a master of the lengthy, lawyerly obfuscation and the disarming but consequence-free apology. Would she really engage with the questions that overshadowed the final years of her leadership until her shock resignation in 2023? Questions about Alex Salmond\u2019s sexual harassment investigation, the Scottish government\u2019s secrecy during the pandemic, the toxic legacy of her gender recognition reforms, the stalled delivery of some of her flagship policy pledges, not to mention independence itself. And what about that rumoured lesbian affair?<\/p>\n

With her ex-husband, former SNP chief executive Peter Murrell, currently awaiting trial for alleged embezzlement of party funds, that topic is rendered conveniently off-limits under contempt of court rules. But that doesn\u2019t mean readers will be able to dispel from their minds images of the famous blue police tent\u00a0planted in her garden. Following her own arrest\u00a0and\u00a0release without charge in June 2023, she remained subject to investigation as part of the probe\u00a0into SNP finances for almost two years. This book\u00a0was written during those dark days (she was formally told there would be no further action in March this year).<\/p>\n

She reveals she came close to having a breakdown after giving evidence at the UK Covid inquiry<\/p>\n

But first, Frankly takes us back to a council flat in the former mining village of Dreghorn, Ayrshire. There, a young Nicola identified with tomboyish George from the Famous Five, worried constantly about her dad joining the swelling ranks of the unemployed, and broke up with her primary school best friend because she wanted to spend more time on her homework. She identifies the fundamental contradiction that would propel her: \u201cAlongside shyness, crippling lack of confidence and a dreadful fear of failure was a burning ambition, a drive to succeed, a craving to be \u2018seen\u2019.\u201d<\/p>\n

It\u2019s a psychic schism that is evident throughout the book. When she starts canvassing as a teenager, \u201csomehow the girl who found it almost impossible to chat with people she knew was able to stand on the doorsteps of complete strangers and ask them to vote SNP\u201d. And later, as Sturgeon and her party soared in popularity after the 2014 independence referendum, she became \u201cscared that my public persona was now so far removed from my private self that I wouldn\u2019t be able to live up to her\u201d. One is left in no doubt about the sheer force of will required to be Nicola Sturgeon<\/a>, and how very good she became at hiding that struggle.<\/p>\n

There are some moments of bracing honesty. She reveals she came close to having a breakdown after giving evidence at the UK Covid inquiry. It was intolerable to her \u201cbeing confronted with everything my worst critics wanted people to believe of me\u201d. I can\u2019t think of another politician of her stature who\u2019d describe themselves on the floor of their home office, gripped by a panic attack as they struggled to edit a crucial policy document \u2013 in this case the Scottish government\u2019s white paper on independence. And a lengthy passage on her pregnancy loss, in which she writes about her lingering guilt and shares the name she had chosen for the baby, Isla, is almost unbearably intimate.<\/p>\n

As you might expect from a book-lover like Sturgeon, she is an entertaining storyteller, with a good eye for detail \u2013 such as the relief she felt on discovering a dead fly in her restaurant meal at her first SNP conference, meaning she didn\u2019t have to pay for it from the \u00a340 her cash-strapped parents had given her to last the weekend. She also enjoys a plot twist: after a thorough take-down of the much-recycled rumour that she had an affair with the female French ambassador, she writes that \u201cthe nature of the insult was water off a duck\u2019s back \u2026 I have never considered sexuality, my own included, to be binary\u201d.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s startling to read her account of the tension and hostility she claims characterised her relationship with Alex Salmond long before the public split that resulted from her government\u2019s handling of sexual harassment allegations made against him by two civil servants. (These later formed part of his criminal trial on 13 counts of sexual assault, of which he was acquitted in March 2020.) The pattern of behaviour she lays out \u2013 bouncing her into standing for parliament before she felt ready, overriding her concerns about releasing the Lockerbie bomber on compassionate grounds, taunting her about her caution on pushing for another independence referendum \u2013 comes across as little short of bullying.<\/p>\n

Of course this cannot be tested against Salmond\u2019s own recollection because of his sudden death last October, and will further infuriate those who believe those sexual assault allegations were a conspiracy confected by Sturgeon and her allies, a theory she takes apart piece by piece.<\/p>\n

She says she \u201cagonised\u201d about \u201cstirring up pain for his wife and family\u201d but concluded \u201cI cannot let what he said stand unchallenged\u201d. It\u2019s a trade-off that makes sense from someone who recognises what an \u201cincreasingly polarising figure\u201d she had become \u2013 indeed anything she writes now will be understood from whichever side of the various fissures readers locate themselves on, be they Scottish independence, Alex Salmond or gender.<\/p>\n

On that issue she also stands her ground: where plenty of others have shifted position since the supreme court ruling on biological sex, she refuses to, while offering her most conciliatory words yet over her \u201ccomplacency\u201d about other women\u2019s worries. What\u2019s clear is the utter discombobulation she felt at having been earlier feted as a role model – \u201cliving up to the honour of being the first female incumbent of my office became almost an obsession\u201d, she writes – only to be decried by some gender critical campaigners as a \u201cdestroyer of women\u2019s rights\u201d.<\/p>\n

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At one point, Sturgeon observes that \u201cwhenever a man is alleged to have done something wrong some people\u2019s first instinct is to find a woman to blame\u201d. Right enough, but there are also legitimate questions about how someone in a position of power and leadership could be so ignorant of someone as close to her as Salmond was. Neither does she explain why the women who brought the original harassment complaints against Salmond described being left without any support by the Scottish government she led.<\/p>\n

She fails to reflect on how having a married couple at the very top of the SNP for more than a decade impacted the party, encouraging the apparently lax governance so many colleagues complained about. She says she \u201chated\u201d the cultish focus on her as an individual, particularly after 2015, but doesn\u2019t explain why it was allowed to continue. Nor does she address the lack of succession planning for her eventual departure.<\/p>\n

Despite the book\u2019s promise of candour, it seems like Sturgeon is only willing to entertain her readers\u2019 curiosity so far. She writes latterly that \u201ceven if I haven\u2019t changed anyone else\u2019s view of me, the process of writing this book has helped me arrive at a more balanced sense of myself\u201d. That may be so, but it doesn\u2019t feel like the whole story.<\/p>\n

Libby Brooks is the Guardian\u2019s Scotland correspondent. Frankly by Nicola Sturgeon is published by Macmillan (\u00a328). To support the Guardian order your copy at guardianbookshop.com<\/a>. Delivery charges may apply.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"When the title of Nicola Sturgeon\u2019s memoir, Frankly, was first announced, I had my doubts. Partly, of course,…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":63650,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[30],"tags":[64,63,457,134],"class_list":{"0":"post-63649","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-books","8":"tag-au","9":"tag-australia","10":"tag-books","11":"tag-entertainment"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/63649","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=63649"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/63649\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/63650"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=63649"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=63649"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=63649"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}