Short, though an opponent of the war, repeatedly pressed for plans for the aftermath of the invasion. But she is included in the failure to undertake post-invasion planning. Campbell has long been linked with the “dodgy” dossier of September 2002 alleging Saddam was pursuing a weapons of mass destruction programme. Book Number 18 is on its way. Number 17, Living Better, has been moved to the books section of the... Read More Fiona is also an atheist but more importantly, in this context, a feminist. There was a period in our 20s and early 30s when we seemed to be going to a white wedding every other weekend, and while I raged about friends I knew to be somewhat detached from godliness doing the God thing, Fiona would smile quietly throughout, but in the car home wonder how a modern woman could “go along with all that being ‘given away’ by one man to another, like a bloody chattel”. As for “obey!” – don’t even go there.

Perhaps in part because of this new perspective, Blair comes across slightly less likably this time; needier, more self-interested but also more self-doubting, and increasingly preoccupied with the soul-sapping war of attrition with Gordon Brown.He would clearly like his diary to be treated as the definitive source on New Labour. Historians will certainly find them very useful for atmosphere. They capture the brittle combination of arrogance and neuroticism during this period when New Labour swaggered towards power by day and sweated that it might yet lose by night. Testifying at the Royal Courts of Justice during the Hutton inquiry into the death of Dr David Kelly, Alastair Campbell said of his diary: "It is not intended for publication." Either the size of the advance changed his mind or, more likely, that was always a cynical fib. He published one version of his jottings in 2007, just two weeks after Tony Blair left No 10. Now comes the first of an intended four further volumes. They compete for thumping length with Winston Churchill's multi-volume chronicle of the second world war. In Campbell's view, they will be barely less important. With characteristic self-effacement, he describes himself as "the nexus of some of the key political and personal relationships which shaped New Labour and therefore recent British political history". As Alastair Campbell said in the introduction to The Blair Years, it was always his intention to publish the full version, covering his time as spokesman and chief strategist to Tony Blair. Prelude to Power is the first of four volumes, and covers the early days of New Labour, culminating in their victory at the polls in 1997. References to Dearlove are dotted throughout volume four of the report dealing with the faulty intelligence about Saddam allegedly possessing weapons of mass destruction.

Eliza Manningham-Buller leaving the Chilcot inquiry after giving evidence in 2010. Photograph: Carl Court/AFP/Getty Images Fiona immediately got in touch with them, and for the last six years has been part of a campaign for equal civil partnerships, which has meant we and many other couples and families can enjoy the same rights and protections as the married, but without the cultural baggage of marriage.Chairman of the joint intelligence committee, the umbrella group for the intelligence agencies, 2001-04

The report notes: “The UK failed to plan or prepare for the major reconstruction programme required in Iraq.” Goldsmith comes out badly from the Chilcot report – maybe second only to Blair in terms of damage to his reputation. POWER AND RESPONSIBILITY is the third volume of Alastair Campbell's unique daily account of life at the centre of the Blair government. It begins amid conflict in Kosovo, and ends on September 11, 2001, a day which immediately wrote itself into the history books, changing the course of both the Bush presidency and the Blair premiership. It’s striking, too, that while Iraq naturally casts a long shadow over this period, only once does Campbell record a conversation between himself, Blair and chief of staff Jonathan Powell about whether it was actually right to invade. (For the record it’s Campbell, who describes himself feeling somewhat “used” by the Americans and wonders if they did the “right thing in the wrong way”, whose view perhaps best stands the test of the time.)

Alastair Campbell announces his resignation as Tony Blair’s director of communications, August 2003. Photograph: Scott Barbour/Getty Images Well, now Tony Blair's consigliere, Alastair Campbell, has stepped forward, after editing down more than two million words into a still-formidable volume, to tell us that in all those years when the author was firing off abusive letters to television stations, tearing a strip off inadequate journalists and threatening elected members of the Labour party with the termination of their halting careers, he was secretly suffering agonies of self-doubt, wondering whether the price he and his family were paying was far too high, and despairing daily of how he might ever again lead what he calls a normal life. At a Celia Johnson-ish moment in their second election campaign, he and Tony Blair stop in a Dorset café by the sea. "Don't you sometimes wish," says Blair, apparently scripted by Noël Coward, "we had a normal life like the people who live over there?" She is one of the few to come out of the report with her reputation enhanced. Manningham-Buller told the Chilcot inquiry that the invasion of Iraq substantially increased the terrorist threat to the UK and helped to radicalise young British Muslims.