Occasionally, the leader of a political party will be asked to name a favourite book. For years, this has produced a dispiriting response. Keir Starmer told an interviewer that he didn’t have a favourite novel or poem. On other occasions, he said that the comic Roy of the Rovers was his favourite book, and, more plausibly, two stories of helpless victimhood, The Trial and James Kelman’s unreadable A Disaffection. It might have seemed that the days were over, when Anthony Eden had been known to be passionately keen on Proust, Margaret Thatcher a great lover of English poetry, John Major an aficionado of Trollope (The Small House at Allington rightly singled out).

No focus group would ever have consented to a book as long, complicated, savage and ambiguous

Last Sunday, Kemi Badenoch appeared on Desert Island Discs, and, asked for her choice of book to take with her, nominated Thackeray’s Vanity Fair. There seems absolutely no doubt that it’s her personal choice. No focus group would ever have consented to a book as long, complicated, savage and ambiguous. No spin doctor would have........

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