The Benn Diaries, selected and introduced by Ruth Winstone (Arrow, £9.99 in, UK)

According to the accompanying blurb, these diaries "have established themselves as among the key political documents of the twentieth century". You can buy that one, or you can read it and quietly pass on. English domestic politics nowadays have an inbred, almost incestuous tone, and as I went through Tony Benn's rather plodding record of his long public career (he was firs elected an MP in 1950). I was irresistibly reminded of the TV series Yes, Minister Plainly he is a conscientious politician and public servant, as well as a good family man, but his style sometimes tends to fatuity, and his outlook on many or most matters outside the immediate day to day routine of political life is blinkered, even simplistic. Perhaps the most interesting sections are those relating to Harold Wilson and the last, precarious days of Labour power under Callaghan - who emerges as rather a shifty opportunist, by the way. Probably only historians, or those with a fascination with the minutiae of British postwar politics, will want to read all of the 600 plus pages.