“... for ‘readable’, ‘enjoyable’ books that ‘zip along’. But I felt some sympathy for Chris Mullin when he complained that the London literary world – ‘those who know best’ – had told him and his fellow panellists, from the outset, which books they ‘must’ include on the shortlist, and had reacted with fury when they were ...”

“... He has come a long way. Born the Hon. Anthony Wedgwood Benn, he inevitably became by public-school nickname ‘Wedgie’ and later, by his own socialist deed-poll, plain ‘Tony Benn’. Today he is more often referred to simply as Benn – a hard word spat out like ‘Lenin’. Benn puzzles and alarms people because he is at the same time frightfully English and frighteningly un-English ...”

“... absent friends, the ones he used to have before he entered a new magic circle’. In 2008 Chris Mullin was forthright on the danger of Mandelson’s return to government: ‘He has a tendency to go gaga in the presence of rich men.’There is a way of reading the Mandelson story as a tragedy. The wheedling and ingratiating tone of the emails ...”

“... Robert Kee (Hamish Hamilton, 1986) Error of Judgment: The Truth About the Birmingham Bombings by Chris Mullin (Chatto, 1986) The Fall of Scotland Yard by Barry Cox, John Shirley and Martin Short (Penguin, 1977) The Politics of the Police by Robert Reiner (second edition, Harvester Wheatsheaf, 1992) In the Office of Constable by Sir Robert Mark ...”