Keith Joseph

This glorious historical monument slows, expands and luxuriously stretches to encompass one of the defining moments of change in our history. When David Kynaston began, in 2007, to publish his Tales of a New Jerusalem, of which this is the sixth volume, each book covered a much longer stretch. His chronicle of the postwar Attlee settlement started with six years; the last two volumes have slowed to less than a year, then three years, and now less than 18 months. They are marvellous volumes, but if the excellent Professor Kynaston, who is 75, is to reach his terminal point of 1979, I recommend that he take his iron pills in the morning and altogether get a little bit less Zeno-and-the-tortoise about the project.

‘All political careers end in failure,’ said Enoch Powell. Maybe. But just occasionally our imperfect political system throws up someone whose impact on our way of life, for good or ill, outlives them. In a series of elegant essays, Vernon Bogdanor, professor of government at King’s College London, examines the careers of six politicians – three from left of centre, three from the right – who, in his view, changed the political weather of modern Britain. Only one, Nigel Farage, is still alive.  First up is Aneurin Bevan, the left-wing firebrand who, in the teeth of fierce opposition from the mighty, vested-interested British Medical Association, presided over the creation of the National Health Service.