Paperback: The Truth That Sticks, by Martin Bell

Though his pedestrian prose never achieves Swiftian heights of invective, the Man-in-White is driven by a similar disgust at themanipulative dishonesty of the Blair regime. Poking through the entrails of scandals from cash-for-peerages to Britain's scarcely credible involvement in a war "on the basis of a falsehood about weapons of mass destruction", Bell is aghast at New Labour's cynical failure in its key aim of restoring public faith in public life. Its record in this field, Bell declares in the italics of 18th-century astonishment, "was wholly, completely and unforgivable negative." The man is a national hero.