Living life in the fishbowl of UK politics – Iain Dale and Sarah Vine at the Chiswick Book Festival 2026

Iain Dale and Sarah Vine signing books at the Chiswick Book Festival; photograph Bridget Osborne

Caroline Frost talks to Iain Dale and Sarah Vine about their memoirs

Iain Dale and Sarah Vine were very entertaining talking to Caroline Frost at the Chiswick Book Festival on Sunday (13 September) about their memoirs on living in the fishbowl of UK politics.

Journalist and broadcaster Iain Dale described how he dodged a bullet when he narrowly avoided becoming an MP. He thinks admitting he was gay is what lost him the local Conservative party’s  nomination in Chipping Barnet in 2003.

Many of his friends in Parliament have told him he has more power, though he considers it is more accurately described as ‘influence’, as the presenter of a show on LBC than they do on the back benches.

Journalist Sarah Vine, who is unstintingly vitriolic writing about people in her own newspaper column, talked about how stressful it was living under the constant scrutiny of the media. As the wife of Michael Gove, she found herself and her family at the eye of the Brexit storm.

A full audience for Iain Dale and Sarah Vine

Why write a memoir?

Iain has written or edited more than 60 books – about politicians, American presidents, military generals and dictators. Caroline Frost asked him why he had decided to write a memoir.

“I didn’t want to write it”, he told the audience at St Michael & All Angels Church. “Other people told me I should”.

After 17 years as a radio host, he has plenty of anecdotes.

For Sarah it was a cathartic exercise:

“I found the whole Brexit thing very traumatic. I lost all my friends and then my marriage broke up. I thought: ‘I need to get all this stuff out of my head and onto the page and then I can forget about it and be sane again”.

Caroline asked them both what they found the most difficult to write about.

“I found the family stuff most the hardest”, said Iain. “My mother died in 2012. That was hugely traumatic. My father died in 2016. The NHS killed them both. You suddenly realise you have no one to turn to and that’s when you become a proper adult”.

He fell out with his siblings and having patched up their relationship, when he came to write the book he made a point of showing them every reference to family, which was “difficult”, but he told the Book Festival audience, he decided if he was going to write his autobiography he didn’t see any point in doing it unless he was going to write about the bad things as well as the good.

Iain Dale and Sarah Vine talking to Caroline Frost; photograph Roger Green

“Is it ok if I ruin our lives?”

Sarah said she went into life as a political wife having no idea what it might mean.

“It’s a bit like giving birth – you can read all the books but until you actually push one out you have no idea what giving birth is like”.

When her husband asked her if it was ok if he became a politician, she said “yes”, without even thinking.

“What he was really asking was: ‘Is it ok if I ruin our lives?’ ”

As a political wife “you’re an appendage. It doesn’t matter that you have your own career, you’re just a plus one.

“It was heartbreaking watching my kids receive rape threats, being told they should die, that their parents should die”

“My children are now 21 and 23, and they are probably the first generation who have had to deal with social media. The social media environment is very brutal, and it was heartbreaking watching my kids receive rape threats, being told they should die, that their parents should die.

“When my daughter was 18, she received a card in the post, a big birthday card with a death threat from the IRA inside it.

“It was like someone taking a cheese grater to my face the whole time”.

“It was heartbreaking watching my kids receive rape threats, being told they should die, that their parents should die”

Why you should never drink too much before meeting the Pope or a Prime Minister

Caroline asked them also for anecdotes which gave them a giggle when they were recalling them to include in their books. It turns out both Michael Gove and Iain Dale have come perilously closed to throwing up over a VIP after drinking too much alcohol.

“When Michael was Education Secretary a friend came round and they demolished a bottle of single malt”, Sarah recounted.

Next morning when he was still in bed, amid the lingering fumes of scotch, she woke him up with: “Aren’t you supposed to be meeting the Pope this morning?”

He shot out of bed, felt incredibly sick in his ministerial car, stopped for a coffee and an almond croissant which with hindsight only made things worse, and found himself standing in a receiving line clutching Vince Cable’s hand for support, watching the papal slippers approaching and thinking:

‘I’m the Education Secretary. I’m going to be sick over the Pope, and everything is going to be over for me”.

As it happened, he received the papal blessing and immediately his hangover was cured.

Iain recounted how he was invited to 10 Downing Street to meet Margaret and Denis Thatcher when he was the chair of the East Anglia Conservative Association in 1983 when he was just 21.

“At the time I didn’t own a suit, so I had to go out and buy one. I drove down to London in my orange Ford Cortina mark III and arrived four hours early”.

Once at the reception he had two glasses of wine, usually his limit.

“I have a low tolerance for alcohol but at a reception like that you feel a bit of a prat standing there without a drink, so I took another one”.

This time he was given a whisky and water, the Prime Minister’s favourite tipple, and having tasted it immediately felt sick, as the Prime Minister approached. Luckily he avoided disaster, or his career might have gone very differently.

“I think you can tell, neither of these books is dry political theory”, remarked Caroline.

Iain and Sarah’s books

Have I Said Too Much?

Iain writes movingly in his memoir Have I Said Too Much? about coming out to his parents as an adult after telling the Conservative selection panel for the parliamentary candidate for Chipping Barnet that he was gay.

“I realised if I wanted to be a Conservative MP I couldn’t have a secret”.

He did not get to the second round despite his interview going very well.

He also writes about his friendship with Ann Widdecombe, who was famously against gay marriage.

How Not to be a Political Wife

Sarah writes about how she and Samantha Cameron were effectively forced by the Brexit referendum to choose between their friendship and their husbands. They both chose their husbands.

“I got a phone call about three weeks before the vote telling me if I didn’t stop my husband, I would find myself in a very cold place. And that’s what happened”.

She also writes about the “third person in my marriage” – Dominic Cummings – and ruefully admits it was her suggestion that Michael should offer him a job.

“But by the way, I would like to say they were never lovers”, which the Mail On Sunday has suggested.

Ian Dale’s book Have I Said Too Much? and Sarah Vine’s book How Not to be a Political Wife are both available from local bookshops and online.