He was not blessed, John Major, with the crude, bright, primary-coloured certitudes that make political leadership simple. He had none of Margaret Thatcher's true-blue single-mindedness, none of her capacity to subordinate people and data alike to her iron will. Instead he was a warm, quiet-spoken human being, concerned for others, prepared to relax with his civil servants when work was done. A man who gave credit where credit was due. A good story-teller.
When he arrived in Rome for his first European summit, I was there with the Taoiseach, Charles Haughey and the Minister for Foreign Affairs, Gerry Collins. At the formal welcoming ceremony on the first evening I stood reverently behind both men at the end of a long receiving line for the new prime minister. Major arrived and moved along, being introduced by his foreign secretary, Douglas Hurd.
As he reached the Irish contingent he smiled broadly, stretched out his arms saying "it's lovely to see a friendly face". Haughey moved forward to shake hands but much to my embarrassment Major moved right past him to greet me. What everyone had forgotten was that he and I knew each other from our attendance at Eco-Fin meetings.
Friendship, it was clear, was more important to him than rank.
His autobiography, all 735 pages of it, is a must for those who have even a peripheral interest in politics, not least because of its clear-eyed yet not venomous account of the internal strife within the Conservative party that started while Thatcher was still prime minister and which she went on to further foment after she'd left office.
"It was a unique occurrence in our party's history - a former prime minister openly encouraging backbenchers in her own party, many of whom revered her, to overturn the policy of her successor - a policy that had been a manifesto commitment in an election held less than six months before" (when she was PM).
It is, perhaps, inevitable that a former Irish politician, reading Major's book, will be struck by Irish parallels. So, for example, I was intrigued to find that the phobia Charlie Haughey had about our Department of Foreign Affairs was mirrored in Downing Street to such an extent that John Major (as foreign secretary) wondered "that the Margaret Thatcher, who so admired many individuals in the department should be so suspicious of it as an institution".
Another parallel is presented by his view of one often under-rated journalist. "David Frost is a dangerous interviewer. He is relaxed and non-combative, and as a result he often draws the unwary onto dangerous territory. He has a gift of persuading people to drop their guard in a way more aggressive questioners never manage." I have always felt the same way about Sean Duignan, believing that the more obvious pyrotechnics on current affairs programming are actually easier to deal with than the soft-edged, even befuddled, approach of a Diggy.
It is, however, on the implications of major events during his time as prime minister that Major is strongest. One such event was Black Wednesday, when sterling fell so spectacularly out of the ERM.
"For a few of my parliamentary colleagues," he writes "Black Wednesday awoke the instincts that turn a profound love of one's own country into a nationalism or insularity that encompasses a distaste for any other. In short, a small minority became not only British, but anti-foreign. For those like me who believed in a tolerant, pragmatic, outward-looking Conservatism, the transformation was deeply disturbing."
Tolerant his conservatism may have been, but tolerant of cabinet rebels he was not, as he was to demonstrate during the Maastricht debate when Michael Portillo and three other cabinet members insisted on a meeting with either the chief whip or Major himself: an insistence he interpreted as "nascent rebellion".
"If you want or insist on a meeting with the PM, you will get one individually" was Major's message to each of the four. "It will be brief and to the point - and probably your last. Any questions?"
Political memoirs of leaders tend to be self-exculpatory by nature and unsubtle in their portrayal of others. Self-derogation, subtlety, humour and a more complex presentation of contemporary figures tends to be found more frequently (and, by corollary, more readably) in the memoirs of less successful, more maverick politicians. As a former prime minister, then, Major is unusual in his thoughtful and generous portrayal of John Bruton ("brave, decent and a trustworthy operator") and his generous but more acerbic view of Albert Reynolds ("he had been an erratic partner in our enterprise, but a courageous one whom I knew well and liked").
It is when dealing with both Reynolds and Dick Spring that Major the writer is at his best: presenting the reader with the evidence on which to make the judgments indicated, which are that Reynolds "was an incessant spinner to the press. This nearly derailed the process on one or two occasions; but it was a price we were willing to pay for Albert's readiness to strike deals" he writes.
"I had (with Reynolds) the frankest and fiercest exchanges I had with any fellow leader in my six and a half years as prime minister."
Elsewhere he writes: "The great point about my relationship with Albert Reynolds was that we liked one another and could have a row without giving up on each other."
On Spring: "Dick Spring was glowering. John Bruton sat beside me, but Spring walked all around the long cabinet table so that he could sit alone, directly opposite the two prime ministers. Spring, leading a minority party of modest size, had unmade the previous Irish government without an election, by transferring his allegiance, and, that evening, he looked ready to do the same to its successor."
Although he is blunt in his negatives, his compassion and understanding nonetheless shine through - it was in him that his mother-in-law first confided that she'd had tests which confirmed she had cancer. "I held her and spoke all the comforting words I could find."
It is difficult to do justice to this book. Never self-serving, it nonetheless makes the reader identify with and admire the writer, too often portrayed, during his time in office, as a grey, limited man. John Major's autobiography establishes him as a calmly observant writer, a cool historian able to cast a cool rather than cold eye on his own political life and death, and above all as a man who, before, during and after politics, has a life - and a life worth writing about.
Maire Geoghegan-Quinn is a former Cabinet minister. She has been a columnist with The Irish Times since 1997