Reading about each other

It’s that time of year again when Waterstone’s asks politicians what they are planning to read over their summer holidays. The Independent has given some co verage to the findings. Last year the theme was low brow with Dan Brown’s The Da Vinci Code topping the table. This year it seems politicians like either reading about their own colleagues or books by each other with Gordon Brown by Tom Bower, The Blair Years by Alastair Campbell and William Wilberforce: The Life of the Great Anti-Slave Trade Campaigner by Tory MP William Hague. On the last book, which came out top of the summer reading list, you would expect a Tory bias but Liberals also said they planned to read it.

No doubt that will help offset some of the earnings that Hague lost when he decided to leave the lucrative after dinner speaking circuit and re-enter the cut and thrust of the opposition front benches.