In an interview on Parliamentary Politics

 Tell me about your first choice, Gyles Brandreth’s Breaking the Code.

Gyles Brandreth is very funny and very indiscreet, isn’t he? It’s a great read. I think it’s one of the most under-appreciated ‘set-top’ diaries. It makes you laugh out loud but it’s also incredibly insightful. It achieves the astonishing feat of making you like Gyles. You start to read it thinking he’s a prat, but you begin to like him by the end of it and you realise he’s quite clever and insightful. His public persona isn’t at all like him and probably does him an injustice. But it’s a good insight into being an MP, particularly learning to be an MP.

He comes in at an astonishingly low level of knowledge and understanding to the point where you find yourself wondering how an earth he got selected – he seemed to know nothing about politics at all. You track his transformation as a fully functioning political creature for good or for ill. It has also got a great insight into the whip’s office – for part of the book he’s a whip and you see the reality of being a whip is far less exciting and powerful than the myth. And, of course, it’s a fantastic insight into a declining government that’s about to die.

I must say I think it was a fantastic read, I think it’s the best book I’ve read about government. I preferred it to Alan Clark’s Diaries.

I also preferred it. The Clark Diaries are quite good on being a minister, but in terms of learning what it’s like in actuality, Brandreth is very good. The Clark Diaries are great fun to read but I’m not sure they tell you that much about politics, or the actual day-to-day functioning of it, whereas Brandreth’s is just full of that. Apparently the new set he’s just brought out is a broader set of diaries, going back to childhood, so the politics is in there somewhere.