'My own contribution to the ‘John Button ego poll genre’, as I call it, has always been unplanned and relates to circumstance. In my last two or three years in Parliament, after I had made it clear I had had enough of politics and wanted to leave, I had approaches, indeed pleadings, from seven publishers about writing my memoirs or autobiography. I did not want to do that. I wanted to finish what I was doing in Parliament and then think about all that at a later stage. I never contemplated writing an autobiographical book at all. What I did want to write was the book I, in fact, did write — Flying the Kite (1994), a different kind of book because the topic really interested me, about my experiences travelling as a politician and particularly as a minister.' (Introduction)
