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Political wives are always an easy target. They know how much gets hushed up in the corridors of power

Emily Sheffield: Matt Writtle
Emily Sheffield: Matt Writtle

There are many juicy titbits within Michelle Obama’s hyped autobiography, Becoming, but having read it I hanker for more detail on the White House years. The real revelations are from before then, when she still belonged to herself. Were there screaming rows with her husband? Did she feel suffocated by those endless outfits and the focus on every aspect of them? How wound up did she get at his critics? What would she have done differently?

The detail is not there because non-stop positivity in the midst of cynicism and adversity is often a political spouse’s only position of power — words carefully, sparsely chosen. Within those hallowed halls of power, wives learn that an awful lot has to be subverted, silenced or hidden. Even now, freed from the White House, she brushes over moments she found “crushing” during Barack’s tenure, the expectation laid on her as this “strange kind of sidecar to the presidency …” Expectations far larger than any male political spouse has to contend with. Note the quiet existence of Theresa May’s husband, Philip.

For Michelle, staggering extra pressure also came from being “the only African-American First Lady to set foot in the White House. I was ‘other’ almost by default. I stood at the foot of the mountain, knowing I’d need to climb my way into favour”. Whatever criticism was aimed at her, she knew she had to do better, that never again could she allow her critics to write her off as “angry” or “unbecoming”.

Political opponents and a male-dominated press like nothing better than an easy target, especially ones required to stay silent. For Cherie Blair it was a tortuous relationship, with constant baiting from the press, and hugely testing for a supremely intelligent woman who struggled to remain quiet. I know my sister, Samantha, looked hard at that scenario and tried her best to avoid it — never letting anyone see a chink in the smile was her act of defiance. As the wife of David Cameron she had entered 10 Downing Street both pregnant and grieving for her eldest son but looked for the positives, finding solace and purpose in the charitable gatherings she hosted every week, for mothers coping with incredibly ill children or parents who had also lost their own.

Michelle worked out in advance what armoury she had and then how to use it to devastatingly brilliant effect

Emily Sheffield

For Michelle, she worked out in advance what armoury she had and then how to use it to devastatingly brilliant effect, and this determination sings from every page. “If you don’t get out there and define yourself, you’ll be quickly and inaccurately defined by others,” she says. She missed nothing: her glamorous, colourful wardrobe held messages of hope, confidence and modernity; the natural human warmth she consistently projected — hugging the Queen, enveloping young women and mothers in unscripted cuddles — radiated hope even when her husband was mired in political mud-slinging; the focus she put into education and young women, and kisses with her husband, showing the power of human love.

Her line at the very end, that her furious rebellion at Trump’s inauguration was to “stop smiling”, is the most powerful and telling revelation. No words allowed but still finding a voice. Isn’t that what women have always done?

Finally I’m swept up by Ferrante fever

Thank God for HBO, because although I would normally advocate reading a book before seeing a screen version of it, with Elena Ferrante’s global hit, My Brilliant Friend, I’m chomping at the bit to see the eight-part series which begins next week.

For I have begun to feel like a philistine, entirely left out of the myriad conversations of adoration.

I am the only person I know who has tried and failed to finish this book. Never mind tackling the other three in the quartet of the cult writer’s pseudonymous tales, which follow the friendship of two young Neapolitan girls into their 60s.

I gamely struggled to love the first 150 pages before reluctantly abandoning it. Meanwhile, Ferrante’s stories have received worldwide adulation, worshipped with the same fervour people have greeted Michelle Obama’s first tome with.

It may be this particular series of hers was just not to my taste. I have just ordered The Lost Daughter, another of Ferrante’s novels. And if I fail again to fall in love, fortunately another screen adaptation is on its way, by the brilliant Maggie Gyllenhaal who has just announced that she’s making a movie of it.

* I can’t bear the fact that the Christmas baubles are upon us, but I love a weepy Christmas ad so I tuned in last night for the John Lewis advert. It traces Elton John to the moment his mum unveils a piano for him. Admittedly, the Nerf guns and computer games my sons insist on having don’t have the same positive message of future genius, but I blubbed away.