Best books… Chris Mullin

Former Labour minister and acclaimed diarist Chris Mullin selects his six favourite political biographies. Mullin has recently published a memoir of his own, Hinterland, published by Profile Books at £20

Churchill by Roy Jenkins, 2001 (Pan Macmillan £14.99). A man of massive self-confidence, enormous energy and monstrous ego, Churchill was often wrong, sometimes disastrously so, but right about the greatest issue of the 20th century. Of all the biographies of him, this is probably the best.

This Boy by Alan Johnson, 2013 (Corgi £7.99). Former Labour cabinet minister Alan Johnson’s remarkable account of his impoverished childhood in 1950s Notting Hill. Beautifully observed, it is moving, humorous and uplifting. Told with a dry, self-deprecating wit and without a hint of bitterness.

Roy Jenkins: A Well

Rounded Life by John Campbell, 2014 (Vintage £14.99). A magnificent biography of one of the most significant politicians of the postwar era. A successful home secretary, chancellor, president of the European Commission and author of more than 20 books and political biographies, Roy Jenkins had it all.

Margaret Thatcher by Jonathan Aitken, 2013 (Bloomsbury £12.99). A warts-and-all biography of one of the giants of modernday politics, written by one who knew her well: “easier to admire from afar than to work with at close quarters”.

The Years of Lyndon Johnson: The Passage of

Power by Robert A. Caro, 2012 (Bodley Head £25). The fourth of a five-volume study of one of America’s roughest, toughest presidents. Do not be put off by the length: it is unputdownable.

Ernest Bevin: Foreign

Secretary by Alan Bullock, 1983 (out of print). Bevin, who left school at the age of 12, was another of the 20th century’s political giants. Present at the founding of Nato and the UN, he helped shape the boundaries of the modern world. “One of that small group of men who had a decisive say on the history of their own times.”