While browsing at the second-hand bookshop during the lunch break of the Fabians' New Year conference, I came across a copy of Barbara Castle's excellent autobiography, Fighting All the Way. I read how, as a young local councillor, she found herself repeatedly and patronisingly referred to as "the charming young lady" by the male Tory leader of the council, unaccustomed to the thought that people important enough to be councillors [...]

This is an astonishingly intimate contemporary history of new Labour's first term of office. Its power comes from the access the author had to the key ministers and advisers of the moment, and from the way in which their stories are used to piece together the behind-the-scenes action. From election night itself, then Bank of England independence, through to the Bernie Ecclestone saga, the Good Friday Agreement, the Dome, the [...]

I had been looking forward to this particular Sunday. It was the day I was due to go down to the Asian area of my constituency to see an old political friend for the first time in ages. It was a house I had visited often in the past few years; his front room had seen many an election plan hatched and carried out, including part of my own selection [...]