BOOK OF THE YEAR ... Riveting, gossipy and touching

Could this be the best book ever written about the Royal Family? ... A masterpiece.

Utterly fascinating

Highly accomplished ... there is much here to entertain and inform

Completely fascinating - written by the man who really knows

The writer who got closest to the human truth about our long-serving senior royals

The fascination of the British public with Tony Blair is almost on the scale of his fascination with his own relationship to them

Really rather splendid

Prime Ministerial memoirs are traditionally stuffy, formal and guarded, as though written under police caution. Tony Blair's are nothing of the sort . . . his memoirs are chummy, colloquial, impulsive and rash . . . it is this candour that makes the book so readable

As this book immodestly reveals, Tony Blair was, and remains, a remarkable influence on politics, both domestically and internationally

What makes his memoir so absorbing as it swings from clever phrase-making and thoughtful contemporary history to wince-inducing self-analysis, is that he is the first of a generation of politicians to conduct their craft as if observing themselves from an amused an admiring distance - and then to write about it. No recent politician has examines his own motives and psychology quite so candidly

It is the small revelations about the character of Blair that make this book worthwhile

It's a gripping insight into the ex-PM's ten years of power . . . It will take a lot for many people to read his own take on the rise and fall of New Labour, but those that do might be reminded of the charm and vision that swept him to power

I have read many a prime ministerial memoir and none of the other authors has been as self-deprecating, as willing to admit mistakes and to tell jokes against themselves

Paints a candid picture of his friend and rival, Gordon Brown, and of their relationship