Runciman on Blair: Ooh, That's Gotta Hurt

David Runnciman gazes into the soul of Tony Blair and sees a familiar personality gazing back:

The person [Blair's new memoir] brought to my mind was Prince Charles, who spent Blair’s premiership writing him and his ministers regular notes, full of his own advice and promptings. Charles’s handwritten letters, as Blair explains, were an occupational hazard of office. They had to be politely received, but could be just as politely ignored. Blair treats Charles in this memoir in much the way you imagine Bush treated him: half respectfully, half mockingly. He respects Charles’s sincerity, but pities his lack of political nous. ,,,  Charles... is more like Blair than either of them might care to admit. They share the same intellectual ambition, a taste for holistic philosophy and a sense of themselves as deep thinkers. Of course, the difference as Blair sees it is that Charles hasn’t really got any ‘grip’. So they share some of the same illusions as well.

 Link.  Query, has Runciman always been such a master of the slashing putdown, and am I just catching up with him?