If you are expecting to read a high-powered analysis of Mrs Thatcher’s policies, then you are going to be disappointed. This book, written by the former Conservative cabinet minister, Gillian Shephard, is, however, valuable in its own right because it paints an authentic portrait of Britain’s first woman prime minister. Shephard has cleverly persuaded 36 …

Jaron Lanier’s message in Who Owns the Future is that the digital revolution has propelled us to the start of an advanced information-based economy, ripe for exploitation by new digital elites before we’ve even started thinking about its fundamental impacts on the general population. Lanier himself is a computer scientist, not an economist nor a …

If it is at all, the first Labour government is usually remembered as a footnote in history. Unlike its second period in power, it did not end in the collapse and controversy of the 1931 ‘betrayal’. There was no battle of ideas over what to do to counter the Wall Street crash. And, unlike 1945-51, …

If The Green Book is a showcase of thinking within the Liberal Democrats, there is little to suggest a stop to their downward spiral. The book is an interesting exposition of why we need to move to a greener, low-carbon economy, and how we can get there. As well as looking at developing a compelling …

Events, dear Boy, Events: A Political Diary of Britain from Woolf to Campbell is a very enjoyable book. Edited by Ruth Winstone who also edited Chris Mullin’s diaries it takes you back to the most amusing parts of a century of politics in the words of diarists from Beatrice Webb to Piers Morgan. When you …

Both British political drama and political comedy has struggled to depict politicians as being anything other than fools, as in Yes, Minister and The Thick of It, or villains, as in House of Cards. Where there is an alternative portrayal, as in Chris Mullin’s A Very British Coup, they are a lone voice of honest …

Is there a friend or loved one in your life who is irretrievably addicted to elections? Who can match constituencies and MPs off the top of their head? Who has memorised factoids from by-elections gone by? Who reminds the uninitiated of a strange Peter Snow-Rainman hybrid? If so, breathe out. Relax. For their next birthday, …

We Brits can be a sensitive bunch, especially where Americans are involved. Before his West Point speech in December 1962, I doubt that Dean Acheson, President Truman’s secretary of state, considered for a second that what he was about to say would knock the confidence of a generation of British statesmen. And yet with his …

The Future is a big book with a compelling, although politically daunting, conclusion. Al Gore seeks to answer the question, ‘What are the drivers of global change?’ Through an at-times dizzying and often sobering ride through a complex array of issues, he tells us that the answer lies in the outcome of ‘a contest between …

Would the world be safer if lawyers were in charge? Geoffrey Robertson seems to think so. In this thought-provoking read, the QC offers a means to achieve a nuclear-free world: by reforming international legal architecture and abolishing atomic weapons completely. His case is clear-cut. Nukes are illegal on human rights grounds because of their capacity …