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Breaking the Code: Westminster Diaries | BUY NOW

Description:
Gyles Brandreth's revealing journal paints an extraordinary portrait of 1990s government - warts and all. Brandreth - MP for Chester and Government Whip - enjoyed a ringside seat at the great political events of the decade, from the fall of Margaret Thatcher to the election of Tony Blair. With candid descriptions of the key figures of the time, from the leading players to the ministers who fell from grace, and with a cast that includes the Queen, Bill Clinton and Joanna Lumley, these widely acclaimed diaries provide a fascinating, unvarnished account of seven momentous years in British political life.

Controversially, Breaking the Code also contains the first ever insider's account of the hitherto secret world that is the Government Whips' Office.

Praise:
'This book is a joy. For anyone interested in politics - indeed, for anyone not particularly interested in politics, but still fascinated by people - it's a complete delight. It is funny, informative, and irreverent, and, more important still, it opens a window on the Westminster world which has been tightly shut since some time in the middle of the last century ...shrewd ...perceptive ...and really very, very funny. I laughed until I almost cried... You can open the book at any page and read with relish' - Julia Langdon, Glasgow Herald

'Perceptive... The dreadful truthfulness of his worm's eye view of the collapse of the Major government. The sheer madness of Westminster is perfectly reproduced' - Ian Aitken, Guardian

'As a witty and insightful chronicler of the dying years of the last government, Mr. Brandreth is unsurpassed' - Michael Simmons, Spectator

'One of the most attractive things about these diaries is that the diarist is (like Alan Clark) one of those rare politicians who can admit, even to himself, to having human weaknesses ... extremely touching... Brandreth emerges as a decent, amusing, talented and charming man' - Simon Heffer, Daily Mail

'Some awfully good stories' - Simon Hoggart, Guardian

'Enormously entertaining - Simon Evans, Birmingham Post

'Brandreth, for my money, offers about the most honest and the most amusing account of the demented, beery futility of the Tory-ruled Commons in the 1990s' - Boris Johnson, Daily Telegraph

'A laugh and a joke as the ship goes down... Brandreth's picture of the Tories in the Gadarene middle-nineties is Breughelesque... Lots of good raw material here for historians of the years when the Tory party fell apart' - Ian McIntyre, The Times

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