It is comforting to think of those who run the country as rounded human beings. Leaders who restore their perspective by retreating from the choppy waters of 24-hour news into their "hinterland" for non-political interests will surely be wiser for it. The phrase is Edna Healey's, whose husband Denis famously combined being chancellor with a continuing passion for photography, literature and music. A new survey on summer reading sheds a little light on what interests today's MPs pursue during their extended absence from the Westminster village.
Encouragingly, none of the top three Commons beach-reads are about contemporary politics. In third place is Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, which may not be the type of literature that would have satisfied heavyweights of the past, such as Healey, but does at least suggest MPs do retain a healthy taste for escapism.
In second place is Richard Dawkins' The God Delusion, an atheist polemic which has engendered huge controversy since its release last autumn. Many parliamentarians may simply want to find out what all the fuss is about. Interestingly, however, the survey suggests the book is especially popular on the Labour side - a possible reaction against the pieties of the Blair years. Despite the party's nonconformist roots, its mainstream is not religious, yet Labour people who are - Blair, Kelly, Blunkett and, in a quieter way, Brown and Straw - have been heavily over-represented at the top table. Maybe Labour atheists will come back from the beach demanding to stand up and be counted ...
The top spot, however, goes to William Hague, for his biography of William Wilberforce. Important as Wilberforce is, I suspect that more than anything this choice shows that MPs are especially drawn to a book written by one of their own. I remember chatting to an MP a year or two back who was outraged that Hague did so little for his constituents that he had found the time to write a major biography of Pitt the Younger; the same MP, however, planned to take that book to read on his summer hols. He was not alone: the Pitt biography was the second-placed parliamentary beach-read last year.
Dig a little deeper and there are other signs that not all our MPs are capable of leaving politics behind. Among Labour members a popular choice is the Campbell diaries. And on the Tory side, Tom Bower's hatchet job on Gordon Brown is being stuffed into the suitcases. As Will Woodward points out, other biographies would offer better balance. But then for the type of workaholic Tory who wants to lie on the sun-lounger and browse through a tome on Mr Brown, balance is hardly the point.
