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The Blair Years: Extracts from The Alastair Campbell Diaries

A dark tale of insider dealing

Alastair Campbell
Hutchinson, pp. 816pp, ££25.00,

Peter Oborne

Wednesday, 18th July 2007

The Blair Years: Extracts from The Alastair Campbell Diaries
by Alastair Campbell

For the most part political diarists are located on the fringes rather than at the centre of power. The two finest British journals from the 20th century were written by failures — Alan Clark and Chips Channon. Only rarely did they gain the sustained access they craved to the great figures of their day. They were looking in hungrily from outside, yearning for advancement which never came. Both journals gain a great deal of narrative pace and comic structure from this frenetic search for power and status. The reader knows, but the diarist does not, that the quest is doomed.

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Deadlier than the male

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