The Silent State, By Heather Brooke

Every MP who cowers in the dock pays unwilling tribute to right-to-know campaigner Heather Brooke: the uncrushable outsider who brought the walls of Westminster corruption tumbling down.

This barricade-storming book moves beyond the expenses scandal to present an angry but meticulous indictment of official duplicity, surveillance and concealment.

From oppressive councils and figure-fiddling mandarins to crooked cops and deceitful spin-machines, she builds a secret-by-secret, lie-by-lie portrait of a state – national and local – that gives its citizens the mushroom treatment.

Keep them in the dark and shovel manure on them. A newpreface notes signs of hope under the Coalition, but the battle has hardly begun.