Ross Lydall - Dear Diary, should I really be writing this at all?

TUCKED away on a bookshelf in my old bedroom in the family home is a political memoir regarded at the time as the finest in its class. Diaries, by Richard Crossman, broke the mould in terms of revealing the inner workings of Whitehall and the inner thoughts of a Cabinet minister.

Sounds fascinating stuff. Alas, I cannot claim to have made it from cover to cover. An analysis of the Harold Wilson era, it was bought to aid my university studies. But, like so many of the academic texts I was obliged to purchase at the time, it me...