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Volume 2 of AC’s diaries opens as Tony Blair enters Downing Street, and contains an astonishing array of events and personalities, progress and setback, crises and scandals, as Labour make the transition from opposition to office. It is astonishing to think that only two years are covered by this volume, as Labour set to work implementing the programme on which they had been elected. Bank of England independence, a minimum wage, devolution, the New Deal jobs programme, schools and hospitals… the policy programme rolls forward.

But so often the unexpected comes to dominate. Blair’s first authorisation of military action in Iraq, his government’s first sex scandal as Robin Cook’s private life is exposed, then Blair’s role in supporting Bill Clinton through an altogether bigger and more potent sex scandal, Ron Davies’ ‘moment of madness’ walk on Clapham Common, Peter Mandelson’s first resignation from the Cabinet over an ill-advised loan. All human and political life is here, perhaps nothing more unexpected than the death of Princess Diana and the extraordinary week which followed. Then there is the Northern Ireland peace process, the highs of the Good Friday Agreement to the deadly low of the Omagh bombing.

Blair’s ministers continue to give him and Campbell headaches, but characters well beyond Britain stalk these pages not least when TB takes up the Presidency of the EU and the G8. Helmut Kohl and Gerhard Schroeder, Jacques Chirac, Boris Yeltsin, Nelson Mandela and above all Bill Clinton take up more and more of the Prime Minister’s time and energies. We witness from the inside the handover of Hong Kong to the Chinese. We get a ringside seat to brutal EU summits. We see Blair’s early attempts to make a difference in the Middle East. And the volume ends with the NI peace process again in trouble, and Britain at the heart of a difficult and messy war to reverse Slobodan Milosevic’s ethnic cleansing of Kosovo, with Campbell sent by Clinton and Blair to Nato to oversee a revamp in the war communications.

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.

Volume 1 details the extraordinary tensions between Tony Blair and Gordon Brown as they resolved the question as to which one should stand to become Labour leader. It shows that right from the start, relations at the top were prone to enormous strain, suspicions and accusations of betrayal. Yet it also shows the political and personal bonds that tied them together, and which made them one of the most feared and respected electoral machines anywhere in the world. A story of politics in the raw, “Prelude to Power” is above all an intimate, detailed portrait of the people who have done so much to shape modern history.

The Blair Years is the most compelling and revealing account of contemporary politics you will ever read. Taken from Alastair Campbell’s daily diaries, it charts the rise of New Labour and the tumultuous years of Tony Blair’s leadership, providing the first important record of a remarkable decade in our national life.

The Blair Years is a story of politics in the raw, of progress and setback, of reputations made and destroyed, under the relentless scrutiny of a 24-hour media. Unflinchingly told, it covers the crises and scandals, the rows and resignations, the ups and downs of Britain’s hothouse politics. But amid the big events are insights and observations that make this a remarkably human portrayal of some of the most powerful people in the world.

There has never been so riveting a book about life at the very top, nor a more human book about politics, told by a man who saw it all.

Emily is a traumatised burns victim, Arta a Kosovan refugee recovering from a rape. David Temple is a longterm depressive, while the Rt Hon Ralph Hall MP lives in terror of his drink problem being exposed. Very different Londoners, but they share one thing: every week they spend an hour at the Prince Regent hospital, revealing the secrets of their psyche to Professor Martin Sturrock. Little do they know that Sturrock’s own mind is not the reassuring place they believe it to be. For years he has hidden in his work, ignoring his demons. But now his life is falling apart, and as his ghosts come back to haunt him, the only person he can turn to is a patient.

Set over a life-changing weekend, Alastair Campbell’s astonishing first novel delves deep into the human mind to create a gripping portrait of the strange dependency between patient and doctor. Both a comedy and tragedy of ordinary lives, it is rich in compassion for those whose days are spent on the edge of the abyss.

Can a man like Steve, working away for a Heathrow logistics company, seriously remain part of her life? He certainly thinks so. But amid the twists and turns of Maya’s public and private lives, the gulf between what Steve thinks and what is actually true gets ever wider. And in a world where the obsession with celebrity seems to make everyone want to be one, truth is hard to find.

Set in modern-day Britain, America and France, Alastair Campbell’s second novel is part psychological thriller, part exploration of the psychology of fame. Steve is a brilliantly ambiguous figure, narrating a story full of morally complex characters from the worlds of film, business, TV, journalism and private investigation. Whether through stars with a love-hate relationship with their public; agents milking the culture of celebrity; a media that cannot get enough because the public always want more, Campbell depicts a society feeding vainly on fame, and the dangerous consequences for those caught up in its frenzy.