Just as all political careers come to sticky ends, so all political memoirs deal in regret. Bright, confident mornings never last, clouds of disillusion and rancour gather; no wonder such accounts are often a dispiriting read.

For the Record
DAVID CAMERON
(WILLIAM COLLINS, 752 PP, £25)
Tablet bookshop price £22.50 • tel 020 7799 4064

Just as all political careers come to sticky ends, so all political memoirs deal in regret. Bright, confident mornings never last, clouds of disillusion and rancour gather; no wonder such accounts are often a dispiriting read. David Cameron’s political end was stickier than most, and he sets out not just to record but to justify his time in office and the decision to hold the Brexit referendum. His book is rather better written and franker than most of its kind, but ultimately it is an apologia not just for himself but for the tradition and the political class he represents.

He wisely acknowledges at the outset that he regrets the outcome of the referendum (though not the decision to hold it), and he remains haunted by thoughts of how he could have played his hand better. He then turns back to describe how he came to find himself an MP in 2001, four years later the Conservative Party leader and in 2010, at the age of 44, Prime Minister.

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