The Goldfish Bowl: married to the prime minister (1955-1997) Cherie Booth and Cate Haste Chatto & Windus, 321pp, £18.99 ISBN 0701176768

Watching Cherie Blair anxiously navigate the media rapids in pursuit of authorial fame and glory makes the goldfish-bowl metaphor seem wholly inappropriate. Her book should have been called Playing With Fire, or something similar, to indicate that central to the project is her yearning to redesign and control her public image. At the same time, she cannot risk any faux pas, so the presentation must be thoroughly raked over, unspontaneous and - whisper it - boring. I would like to have been a fly on the wall when the arguments were raging (and I'm sure they must have) as to whether a chapter on Cherie herself should be included. Naturally, it wasn't, and the word has gone round that Tony is nervous. Cherie wants to win hearts and minds, Diana-style, but that is not what prime ministers' wives are meant to do - as this book shows.

Taken at face value, the book is a series of mini-biographies of seven prime ministers' spouses from between 1955 and 1997. The stories do not even focus on their time in No 10, so the unifying theme is somewhat diluted. I guess there was not enough meaty material about that down-at-heel and inconvenient residence to fill a book. The lives of this cohort overlapped, so there is a fair amount of repetition. The portraits themselves are nicely written, in Cate Haste's recognisably lucid style, yet there is something horribly noblesse oblige about the way all these women conform with the stereotype of wifely excellence. At least the modern, warts-and-all biographical approach makes subjects appear three-dimensional.

We must not forget that one of the spouses, Denis Thatcher, was a man; and in many ways he comes across as the most sympathetic character in the book. Perhaps the tendency of any man to think of his own career as more important kept him from being swept up in the inanities of image and presentation that seem to be what government today is all about. Nor must we forget that Cherie is the most recent member of this exquisitely select club. The unwritten agenda is that she runs true to type, and we may wonder at the degree of iron control that made this indirect portrayal necessary.

Some fascinating anecdotes break through the straitjacket of correctness. The early wives came from a patrician class which did not need haute couture to prove its pedigree: women who were at home in grubby wellies and shapeless tweed skirts, and who would have scorned any attempt to make them over. One cannot help thinking that Cherie would have had less trouble with her image if she had stuck to the messy hair and leg-revealing nightie. Maybe one needs the self-confidence of aristocracy for this. Clarissa Eden, Dorothy Macmillan and Elizabeth Home were all born into the class from which prime ministers emerged. They were very clear about their role, which was to offer their husbands total support. They shone in his reflected glory. Even Dorothy Macmillan, renowned for her affair with Lord Boothby, hung in there and got away with it, presumably because she was a duke's daughter, and had therefore helped advance Harold's career. There is clear evidence of subtle trading between the sexes. ("God, trade again," said Dorothy's father on hearing of her choice. "But I suppose books are better than beer.")

Mary Wilson broke the mould, and if anyone deserved a grumble about lack of support, she did, propelled as she was from a working-class background to the dizzy heights. She was a feminist in advance of the van, and influenced her husband towards accepting women as equals. The bizarre dual purpose of No 10, in which there is no dividing line between office and home and politicking can take place in bathroom and bedroom, caused her much distress, which she resolved by writing poetry (though she was not permitted to sell it, as this would have been to exploit her position). We read about the Wilsons' holidays in the Scilly Isles at their own property, and how they were left in peace by the press - "a convention which is sadly no longer respected". There are at least three lessons here for Cherie, shouting from her own book.

The changes in women's status generally are reflected in the hype that has accompanied Cherie's rather ordinary first publication. Seventeen years ago, the publication of Norma Major's excellent book on Joan Sutherland coincided with the 1987 general election. The publicity tour was abandoned as Norma dutifully followed her husband on the campaign trail.

The authors concede the obvious point that everyone has found her (his) own way. It does seem to me that the one who has got spectacularly in a muddle and lost her way through wanting it all is Cherie. But her tale is yet to be told.

Margaret Cook is the author of Lords of Creation: the demented world of men in power (Robson Books)

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