It is the time of year when normally talkative politicians and writers go quiet. They have books to publish and do not want to let slip careless words that will alert commercial rivals to their precious secrets.
When Mo Mowlam's biographer, Julia Langdon, opened the Sunday Mirror the other weekend she realised that a sharp-eyed freelance journalist had followed up a throwaway remark in a Guardian profile which Langdon herself wrote two years ago.
The result of his trip to Florida was a double page spread on Mo's student affair with Dan Sammons, an American who drowned in Tallahassee. Fortunately Langdon's Mo Mowlam still contains a wealth of revelations which should make for Christmas present sales beyond the political elite who want to hear the inside story of Mo's political troubles.
That may mean trouble in turn for Downing Street. In a foretaste, Langdon recently named Jonathan Powell, the prime minister's chief of staff, as one of the figures who undermined Ms Mowlam while she was Northern Ireland secretary.
Peter Mandelson, Ms Mowlam's successor, will not escape lightly. He is expected to be blamed for highlighting Ms Mowlam's inattention to detail, a suggestion which prompted Mr Mandelson to question her wisdom in co-operating with Langdon.
This will not be the only flare-up Tony Blair's firefighters will have to contend with. Columnist Andrew Rawnsley's Servants of the People threatens to offer fresh insights into crucial episodes in the Blair administration.
Problems may also flow from Geoffrey Robinson, the treasury minister who resigned with Peter Mandelson over the £373,00 home loan, but did not come back. He will be giving his side of the story.
The millionaire publisher of the New Statesman remains a loyal ally of Gordon Brown and his The Unconventional Minister promises to concentrate on policy-making, not personalities. But it can hardly be gossip-free.
Such rumour and calculation make authors, agents and the newspapers to whom they have sold serialisation rights nervous. "I've got things very tightly tied up with the PR people," a terse Paddy Ashdown said from his French retreat this week.
It falls to Michael Heseltine to be first on the bookstands when his memoirs, A Life in the Jungle, will be published on September 8 with an ambitious print run of 50,000 copies. Volume one of Paddy Ashdown's Diaries (1983-97) will appear last in November.
The reason for his delay is the same as the former Tory deputy prime minister's early appearance. Both have seen how big-name memoirs such as Margaret Thatcher's - and even John Major's unexpected best seller - have upstaged their party's conferences.
Just as Mr Heseltine insisted that his book come out well before the Tory conference beginning on October 2, so the former Liberal Democrat leader resisted blandishments to allow his to make waves during Charles Kennedy's week in Bournemouth starting on October 17. It is especially sensitive this year since Mr Kennedy is publishing his own slim volume.
Mr Ashdown has also refused to publish anything connected with this parliament so keen Lib Dems will have to wait for volume II after the next general election to learn the authorised version of Tony Blair's aborted plan to bring him into government in 1997.
This diary will be up against stiff competition. Ion Trewin, urbane managing director of Weildenfeld and Nicolson, has edited a second volume of the late Alan Clark's best-selling diaries, arguably the wittiest and wickedest political diaries of a diary-strewn century.
The Times has bought serialisation rights, though word in the book trade is that they are bound to be judged "disappointing" simply because the first volume was such a hit.
They may lack the spice provided by what one Clark fan called glimpses of "the black stocking tops of power". Volume II covers post-1992 when he was (mostly) no longer an MP and his heroine no longer prime minister. But it will end strongly as the wealthy ex-defence minister sweeps back to Westminster in the 1998 Kensington and Chelsea byelection.
Mr Clark was famously not a fan of William Hague and had mixed feelings about Michael Portillo - the two names media-watchers will be looking for as they scan the index.
Unexpectedly Michael Heseltine's book (he rejected the titles Tarzan or Hezza) is said to be "astonishingly kind" to the rightwing Portillo, briefly his deputy in the struggle to replace the poll tax. He is ruder about Lady Thatcher and Norman Tebbit, but guarded about Mr Hague.
Hezza's old Oxford Union chum Anthony Howard, who was "at his elbow" during the writing, reveals that he was also reluctant to settle scores with the likes of cabinet rival Kenneth Baker. "He's not very good at knifing people," says Mr Howard, who calls it a proper old-fashioned biography which starts with Mr Heseltine's Swansea childhood.
Mr Heseltine admits getting guests to sign the register before the Tube trains shook the foundations of his first hotel in Bayswater, central London- the basis of his fortune. But the author reports no recollection of two famous anecdotes: mixing margarine with butter in the hotel or writing out his plan to become prime minister on the back of an envelope at Oxford.
William Hague will have problems of his own. Journalist Jo-Anne Nadler will become first to publish a biography - William Hague: In His Own Right. Although friendly she already appears to be the source of the claim that the Tory leader drank 32 rum and cokes on his 18th birthday, after all that beer at 15.
In Anne Widdecome: Right from the Beginning, Nicholas Kochan attempts to trace the shadow home secretary's life from her convent to high office.
She and Mr Hague will have time to live down any awkward revelations before they are likely to take office. Ministers are in a trickier situation, especially when an ex-colleague like Peter Kilfoyle, the MP for Liverpool Walton, is writing Left Behind: Lessons from Labour's Heartland.
Although it promises to be a portrait of his native Liverpool it will also address his resignation as junior defence minister last winter and how heartland disaffection must be faced.
The tireless political biographer Paul Routledge is still busy working on Margaret Thatcher's murdered colleague Airey Neave this winter. He has just returned from Colditz from which Neave escaped in World War II. He will also reissue his biography of the former speaker Betty Boothroyd ("fully updated").
Donald MacIntyre, his rival in the race to write up Peter Mandelson in 1998, will finally bring out an equally-revised paperback version of his Mandelson after the admired hardback was pulped in a libel suit.
Guiding Light, a collection of the late John Smith's words, will be more kindly received, certainly more so than Tom Bower's unauthorised version of Geoffrey Robinson's life which he will complete after his biography of another turbulent tycoon - Branson - comes out.
With books the publishers can never tell what will make a sensation and what will sell. Mo Mowlam promises to write her own book eventually. But that has not stopped Little Brown printing 30,000 copies of Langdon's book, nor staff at the printers reading it as they print. "I've never heard that happening before," says its editor. It's the Mo Factor.
Chapter and verse on the foibles and feuds
A Life in the Jungle
by Michael Heseltine
Co-written with columnist Anthony Howard, the former deputy PM's memoirs will reignite the debate over Tory party splits, with criticism of Thatcher, praise for Portillo and guarded remarks about Hague's leadership.
Published by Hodder & Stoughton on September 8.
Into Politics: The Long-awaited Early Years
by Alan Clark
Huge sums of money have changed hands in the battle for the serialisation rights to this second instalment of the late Tory minister's extraordinarily successful - and viciously offensive - political diaries. Publishing insiders warn they can only be a let-down after the sensational first volume. Embarrassment for grandees but no worries for Hague.
Published by Weidenfeld & Nicolson on October 12.
Mandelson
by Donald Macintyre
This paperback edition of the highly acclaimed biography of Peter Mandelson has been updated. The author promises additional material on his downfall and rehabilitation but hottest news may be an update on the Brown-Mandelson feud.
Published by HarperCollins on September 18.
Servants of the People
by Andrew Rawnsley
The Observer columnist who revealed the "psychological flaws" remark about chancellor Gordon Brown is expected to reveal who offered him this insight - was it or wasn't it Alastair Campbell? Likely to focus on the alleged deal Brown and Blair struck in opposition over the Labour leadership and the deep tensions that has provoked ever since.
Published by Hamish Hamilton on September 25
William Hague: In His Own Right
by Jo-Anne Nadler
Unfortunately for Nadler, a journalist and former Tory party media manager, the best insights into the youthful Hague contained in her unauthorised biography have already been scooped - by the man himself when he told GQ earlier this month that he was once a 14-pints-a-night man.
Published by Politico's Publishing on October 2.
Ann Widdecombe: Right from the Beginning
by Nicholas Kochan
This unauthorised biography is expected to contain interesting insights to the shadow home secretary's childhood, her religion and her unstinting moral views on everything from abortion to fox hunting.
Published by Politico's Publishing on October 2.
Mo Mowlam
by Julia Langdon
This biography may be unauthorised but the author, the former political editor of The Mirror, has enjoyed close co-operation from the minister's friends - which does not bode well for enemies of the massively popular but deeply embittered Cabinet Office minister. A barrage of political revelations is promised, including the inside story of Dr Mowlam's fall from grace in the New Labour inner circle.
Published by Little, Brown & Company on October 12.
Left Behind: Lessons from Labour's Heartland
by Peter Kilfoyle
The respected former defence minister is expected to continue his criticism of Tony Blair and the Labour leadership.
Published by Politico's Publishing in October.
The Unconventional Minister
by Geoffrey Robinson
Even the driest of tales from the former paymaster general will refocus attention on the Blair-Brown-Mandelson relationship. The most potentially damaging book this autumn.
Published by Michael Joseph on November 2.
The Ashdown Diaries, Volume I (1988-97)
by Sir Paddy Ashdown
These memoirs have already got Downing Street officials in jitters with plans to detail Tony Blair's talks about joining Labour's cabinet in 1997. Published by Allen Lane The Penguin Press on November 2.
Julia Hartley-Brewer
