Guobin Li

In the context of the extract from Tony Blair's political memoirs, what is meant by the proverbial dog with a bone?

 

Derry Irvine was already a successful lawyer at the Bar when he was only thirty-six years old. He became Tony Blair's mentor and, according to the memoirs, it was him who taught Tony Blair how to think, a critical skill for legal jobs. Derry, as a counsel, was required to perform extensive and complex research into relevant facts and law; He needed to conduct a superficial analysis. In the memoirs, Tony Blair described Derry as "the proverbial dog with a bone" when facing with a legal problem. Tony Blair wrote: he would gnaw at it, examine it, turn it over, bury it, dig it up, step back and stare at it. Derry's analytical behavior was compared to that of a dog working on a bone. There is no denying how much a dog takes pleasure in chewing on a bone and a dog would not easily give up a bone before she has fully "explored" it. Tony Blair also wrote: he wouldn't stop or reflect until he got every bit of meat there was off it. He was completely uncompromising when it came to matters of the mind. It is just like how much the meat on the bone matters to a dog. With the comparison, Tony Blair wanted to show how persistent Derry was when dealing with a legal problem. It is this never-give-up attitude, perhaps, has made him one of the best and brightest counsels at the Bar. When analyzing a problem, Derry would utilize whatever way possible, be it conventional or a first principal. This in Tony Blair's eye was seen as his genius.