A fierce bidding war has broken out for Robin Cook's new book, which is expected to be among the most incendiary political memoirs for decades.

Bids went in two days ago and it is believed publishers Simon & Schuster have recouped their £350,000 advance to the former foreign secretary.

Mr Cook, who walked out of the cabinet over the war on Iraq, is expected to spill the beans on his growing disillusionment with the Labour party's leadership in the book, which will come out in September.

It is believed huge bids were submitted from rival newspaper publishers - believed to be the Daily Mail, the Times or Sunday Times, and the Telegraph group - promising to pay back almost the whole of this advance.

The Simon & Schuster managing director, Ian Chapman, is this morning expected to break the news on who was successful to the winning bidder.

"Simon & Schuster have done a fantastic deal. You could speculate they have made almost the entire advance back, which is incredibly unusual," said an industry insider.

The deal, if confirmed at over £300,000, will dwarf that of the most recent controversial political biography by Edwina Currie, who landed £150,000 for her Times serialisation containing the explosive revelation about her affair with former prime minister, John Major.

Baroness Thatcher, however, holds the record - the Sunday Times is believed to have paid more than £1m for the Iron Lady's memoirs as part of a £3m deal with HarperCollins, also owned by Rupert Murdoch.

Simon & Schuster reportedly paid Hillary Clinton an $8m advance for her book, some of which was leaked to the Associated Press this week. It will be serialised in the Sunday Telegraph in the UK, but the paper is believed to have paid under six figures - a tiny fraction of the overall cost of the scoop to the publisher.

Mr Cook, who has been a senior figure in the Labour party for almost 20 years, resigned as leader of the House of Commons in March because he opposed military intervention in Iraq without the backing of the UN.

Friends of the former foreign secretary have insisted the book will not be a "hatchet job", but his involvement in crucial cabinet meetings in the run-up to the war, not to mention his first-hand observation of the rivalry between Tony Blair and Gordon Brown, will be doubtless sufficient to give Alastair Campbell sleepless nights.

Mr Cook is reported to have turned down a bigger offer from a rival publisher because he wanted to tell his story in his own way.

Readers should not expect to learn much more about the breakdown of Mr Cook's marriage. He ended the marriage in an airport lounge when a newspaper was on the brink of revealing his affair with his secretary Gaynor Regan.

To save the government from further embarrassment, Mr Campbell forced him to make a hasty choice between wife and mistress.

Margaret Cook published her account of their marriage in her book, A Slight and Delicate Creature, for which she received a reported £100,000 advance from Weidenfeld & Nicolson.

Other beneficiaries of top serialisation payouts include Ulrika Jonsson and Victoria Beckham.

The Daily Mail paid £900,000 for Beckham's book, Learning to Fly, much to the annoyance of her friend, the Daily Express owner Richard Desmond.

Last autumn the Mail was reported to have paid Ulrika Jonsson £700,000 for the rights to her autobiography, Honest, although executives on the paper insisted the deal was closer to £400,000.

Anne Robinson's Memoirs of an Unfit Mother raked in £500,000 in serialisation rights from the Daily Telegraph, while the Times paid Manchester United captain Roy Keane £175,000 for his memoirs.

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