The closest competition in the same timeframe might be Balzac's Lost Illusions (1843), a tale still more riddled with duplicity and hypocrisy. Although Anthony Trollope's The Way We Live Now was first published 146 years ago, few better guides to rogue capitalism and raw ambition exist. We could then seek out a novel which successfully explained the politics of politics. Samuel Pepys, James Boswell and Anne Frank can certainly stay, but "Chips" Channon and Alan Brooke should be left to rest in peace. Beyond those books, though, lies a wide swamp of foolishly self-important, viciously catty, bitchy diaries. After considering biographies and minders, we might turn to diaries, encouraged by Jock Colville's wonderfully intimate portrait of Churchill at war and the first President Bush's attempt to make sense of his own reactions to daily developments. Noonan's recollections about writing a speech on the "Challenger" tragedy are a master class in both grace and eloquence under pressure. Huchon's account of his first hour in power at Matignon reveals more that matters about politics than do many books. The two of them saw a lot, and saw through a lot more. Both love their craft and still admire their old bosses. Jean-Paul Huchon and Peggy Noonan manage to be confiding without gossiping, incisive but not intrusive. One is by the former chief of staff to a French Prime Minister (Michel Rocard), the other by the speechwriter for an American President (Ronald Reagan). While many political minders remain sycophants and acolytes, two minders' memoirs are first-rate. Eventually a political failure himself, Jenkins nonetheless doubled as the author of admirable biographies of other political figures Gladstone and Churchill especially. The former British minister, Roy Jenkins, provided one option. Sadly we have no cruel but wise Tacitus to guide us, as he steered Romans through the sins and crimes of their imperial rulers. We citizens need a different angle of view on politics. So, too, is the difficulty in switching to solitary, secluded writing after a lifetime of rush and fuss, bluff and bluster.
Why, though, are such rich narratives so rarely turned into decent prose? Ego is one obvious but obviously critical obstacle. Drama and melodrama may occupy the foreground but fantasy, theatre of the absurd and black comedy lurk on the sidelines.
Even the lives of politicians like our prime ministers contain compelling material for a good story. Angela Merkel may never write a memoir since the genre would be anathema to the scientific method - methodical, meticulous, accurate, humble - she cherishes. The former French President, Nicolas Sarkozy, for one, records his own impatience, rudeness and vanity, then converts those attributes into ambition, passion and guts. The few politicians prepared to recognise their flaws usually transform those failings into virtues. Waxing ironical about your victories does not equate to introspection, as Barack Obama could have learned. In seeking vindication, Bill Clinton and David Cameron might have noted self-absorption is the enemy of self-knowledge and self-criticism. Writing a memoir therefore becomes a final chance to have the last word.
Most of his counterparts, though, are surprised to find their careers end badly. Nelson Mandela's Long Walk to Freedom remains a most honourable exception. As for politicians, they cannot be trusted to describe, let alone demolish, the houses of their lives. An exiled Czech writer, Milan Kundera, reckoned "the novelist demolishes the house of his life and uses its bricks to construct another house: that of his novel".