Diary of an MP's Wife: Inside and Outside Power: 'riotously candid' Sunday Times

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Unsurprisingly, she was scathing about Michael Gove (it’s a national sport, really) and surprisingly unpleasant about Sarah Vine, for reasons, I concluded, of jealousy.

The Financial Times and its journalism are subject to a self-regulation regime under the FT Editorial Code of Practice. I know people like this, they really think that they are so “speshul” that the normal rules and conventions need not/ought not to apply to such as them. For more than twenty years she has kept a secret diary detailing the trials and tribulations of being a political plus-one, and gives us a ringside seat at the seismic political events of the last decade. But if the first half of the book is a giddy romp through life under the “chumocracy”, the second is more bittersweet, chronicling the fracturing of old friendships post-Brexit in what has become a court exiled from power.As her old friends argue fruitlessly over the best way to thwart a hard Brexit and plot unsuccessfully to manoeuvre Rudd into Downing Street, she backs the arch Brexiter Dominic Raab’s leadership bid before warming to the “slobbering golden retriever” Boris Johnson. The pesky MP's wife may have a better sense of public taste than all the players strutting on the political stage. Sasha Swire was raised and educated in west Cornwall, where her father, Sir John Nott, was MP for the St Ives constituency. One can only imagine Buckingham Palace’s reaction meanwhile to her observation, following a private dinner with Prince Edward in 2010, that he “seems overwhelmed with relief that the Conservatives have got in”. The diary covers not only the rise and fall of the Cameroons, but also the shenanigans surrounding Brexit and the inexorable rise of Boris, concluding at the end of last year when Sir Hugo (as he was by then) left parliament.

She insists she never originally intended to publish the resulting inside story of a turbulent Tory decade, for fear it would be seen as a betrayal.Someone who I’ve met and whose general reputation is for total charmlessness, was surprisingly (to me) described as “charming” – presumably for being nice to her. Her secret diary covers not only the rise and the fall of her friends the Camerons, but also the shenanigans surrounding Brexit and the inexorable rise of Boris, concluding at the end when Sir Hugo (as he was by then) left Parliament. I giggled when there was some mention of someone who had fallen foul of him and was a “name forever loathed in the Nott household” – ah, I thought, just like Nott in ours.

There was a lot of publicity, and many extracts available in the national press for this humdinger of a political tell-tale “diary”. To the evident lack of understanding of their mother, they became followers of Jeremy Corbyn and his hope for a better Britain. A professional partner and loyal spouse, Swire has strong political opinions herself - sometimes more 'No, Minister' than 'Yes'. Diary of an MP’s Wife is a searingly honest, wildly indiscreet and often uproarious account of what life is like in the thick of it.A professional partner and loyal spouse, Swire has strong political opinions herself – sometimes more ‘No, Minister’ than ‘Yes’. Ten years ago, reviewing Alastair Campbell's diaries for the Spectator, I concluded as follows: "Who will be the chroniclers of the Cameron government? Lady Swire has a keen eye for detail and a waspish turn of phrase, which makes this a real page-turner. It was really, really funny in parts, and set off with a bang with much to-ing and fro-ing in Hillsborough Castle and royal visits.