I’d forgotten the benefits of having two whole weeks off, not least in being able to do some decent chunks of reading.

I was given some great books for Christmas, including The Strange Death of Tory England, Condi vs. Hillary (Observer extracts here) and DC Confidential, all of which I’ve enjoyed, in their way. There is something stimulating about reading a book written by someone coming from an opposing position to you.

On DC Confidential, I think I’d go with Iain Dale’s opinion that

This book is full of little snippets of human observation and gossip, which in many ways are its redemption. Some fairly turgid prose is often broken up by an acid aside, for which the reader is too often rather thankful.

Unlike Iain, I finished it quite quickly, possibly because having read the serialisation in the Guardian, most of the interesting bits were not new, and I found the laborious tale of the diplomatic to’ing and and fro’ing before the Iraq war frankly pretty tedious.

The Strange Death of Tory England was an unexpected gift, and a fascinating one, as I know far less about the history of the Conservatives than I do about the internal struggles of the Labour party. It was the asides from the narrative that were most interesting - for example, the casual mention that Tory support for catholic emancipation and the repeal of the corn laws set a precedent

“which would be followed as far away as France and the United States by men as unlike Wellington as Charles de Gaulle and Richard Nixon: the “wrong” leader or party taking a historically necessary step.” (p.28)

Condi vs. Hillary is so far as expected: a vitriolic and partisan denunciation of the senator from New York for not spending her childhood learning to play the piano and daring to stand for elected position as a student (I’m only a few chapters in) and a paean of praise for the black young woman who epitomises the power of individual achievement and the failure of the collective. However, the musings on electoral maths are, as usual with Dick Morris, spot-on.

My family and Jo also gave me some cookery books, fiction, a family memoir of a Polish Jewish family in the twentieth century called In the Garden of Memory, which I’m saving for a rainy Sunday afternoon, Sex and the City DVDs, money towards Jo’s and my holiday in Kefalonia after the local elections, and an MP3 player, to make getting leaflets out a bit more bearable.

I’ve a birthday in a week or so, so are there any other political / political history books I should read soon? Laban has already reminded me in the comments that I meant to read Melanie Phillips’ The Ascent of Women.

BTW: Buggered if I know why the site is messing about today.