Within the next five to ten years, there are bound to be new political changes and economic crises to shake the UK economy as it moves back into rising dependence on imported energy and a further erosion of domestic manufacturing capacity.

I am a John Mortimer fan, but his In Other Words (Viking, £14.99) is a lazy anthology, and overpriced. No fewer than three Betjeman poems are in its 112 pages, and perhaps the two best-known Audens. Other poems are wonderful but hackneyed: Milton’s ‘On His Blindness’, Wilde’s ‘The Ballad of Reading Gaol’, Browning’s ‘My Last Duchess’ and Byron’s ‘We’ll Go No More A-Roving’. Cavafy’s well-known ‘Waiting for the Barbarians’ is here; instead, what about one of Arthur Waley’s superb and much less anthologised translations from the Chinese, say, ‘We plucked the bracken…’?

But the book is almost worth its inflated price for an anecdote about Lord Arran. He introduced into the House of Lords both the Sexual Offences Bill ‘which permitted men of a certain age to be as friendly as they liked’ and a bill for the preservation of badgers. As he lay dying, he asked a friend at his bedside why it was that the House of Lords had been packed full, with peers almost falling out of the public gallery, ‘when I passed my buggers bill, but almost completely empty except for a few old earls when I passed my badgers bill’. It took his friend to remind him that there are very few badgers in the House of Lords.

Boris Johnson, late editor of this magazine (he was the only one in 20 years who sent me ‘herograms’ about my book reviews), cuts a new figure on the English stage: the bumbler who is effective and succeeds. Or maybe Macmillan qualifies. Unlike Viking, New Holland Publishers, pricing at only £4.99 The Thinking Man’s Idiot: The Wit and Wisdom of Boris Johnson compiled by A. Vasudevan, offer a bargain for every Christmas stocking. A few samples of the flaxen mop-top’s obiter dicta:

Blackwell Bookshop

Purchase your copy here, 10% off RRP