Richard Ingrams' Week: Has Blair ever read a book?

I have always been suspicious of people who claim to have read Karl Marx. I remember Brian Walden, once the brilliant white hope of the Labour Party, claiming to have read him in the original German. I didn't believe it any more than I believed Walden's claim to have fought in the Korean War.

The latest to make the Marx claim is the youthful Tony Blair who, in a long letter to the then Labour leader Michael Foot written when he was 29 and trying to get into Parliament, boasts: "I did actively trouble to read Marx first hand. I found it illuminating in so many ways."

With all that we now know about Blair it is reasonable to question the veracity of everything he ever said about anything at any age. But this applies especially to books.

It is hard to make speeches and write articles without occasionally referring to what the great men of the past have said about this or that.

I can't remember Blair at any time giving any indication that he has ever read any book. This, however, has not stopped him from claiming the opposite. He once let it be known that he was a keen reader of P G Wodehouse (presumably in the hope of winning over a few Tory voters) but when challenged by Francis Wheen to be more specific - what, for example, were his favourite Wodehouse novels? - remained mysteriously mum.

The letter to Foot had one aim only, ie to suck up to the old boy in order to further his own political career. If so, it was successful. I remember that for many years Foot refused to disparage Blair and when encouraged to do so by his mischievous nephew Paul would only say: "Decent chap. Decent chap."

Send in the lawyers and stir up maximum publicity

The downfall of the Soviet agent Sir Anthony Blunt, a drama in which I played a minor walk-on role, came about only because his solicitor made an attempt to stop a book about him from being published.

The book, The Climate of Treason, by Andrew Boyle, did not even name Blunt. But his legal move linked him for the first time with the story of the so-called Fourth Man. Private Eye made his intervention public and this in turn led to his eventual exposure by Margaret Thatcher.

When will they ever learn? Prince Charles's solicitors this week made moves to try to prevent the publication of yet another behind-the-scenes book about him by one of his retainers, Ms Sarah Goodall, described as a "trusted Lady Clerk". Until the royal solicitors Harbottle & Lewis approached the publishers Mainstream demanding to see an advance copy of the book, no one knew much about it.

Now, thanks to their Blunt-like intervention it has become news and there is widespread interest, which perhaps it does not really deserve. Harbottle and his colleague ought to be aware that whatever happens it is now quite difficult to stop a book from coming out. If legally challenged, Mainstream can publish it abroad and punters can get it via the internet.

And in the meantime, I expect, they will be more than grateful for all the advance publicity.

* If politicians have their way it will not be for another 30 years or so that the public is told what was the "reliable" intelligence that led to the massive police raid on that little house in Forest Gate.

By that time everyone will have forgotten all about it and many of us will have gone, we hope, to a better place. I hope for the good of all of us that one or two brave and enterprising journalists may try to solve the mystery before we go.

I do not express this hope with the aim of discrediting the police. Because the police are discredited already. The Forest Gate fiasco was only the latest in a long line of disasters going all the way back, if you like, to the days of Irish terrorism and the imprisonment of the Guildford Four and the Birmingham Six.

More recently we have the Stockwell shooting and also in 2004 the Old Trafford disaster, which bears many similarities to Forest Gate. In April that year 400 policemen raided houses in Manchester and arrested 10 people, including a 16-year-old boy.

The media were told that the police had foiled a plot to blow up Manchester United football ground. As with Forest Gate, a number of sensational but false details were leaked to the press. And as with Forest Gate no one was ever charged.

If the public is to regain its confidence in the police it needs to know how and why these things happen. Politicians, least of all the Tory Opposition, will do nothing to press for an inquiry while the Prime Minister still supports Forest Gate "101 percent". The much-reviled media remain our only hope.