How we ended up in this state

From Westminster to Wandsworth prison – tales of a turbulent 12 months in our nation’s history

Fault lines: Untitled (2012) by South African photographer Nobukho Nqaba, from Africa

State of Mind (Thames & Hudson, £39.95)

In this turbulent year for British politics we have needed writers, as never before, to decipher for us the personalities and the Big Ideas behind the headlines. Starting with the man at the top, the Prime Minister is analysed by the perceptive Tom Bower in Boris Johnson: The Gambler (WH Allen, £ 20). When did we last have a leader whose biographer was able to write in the index, “Johnson, Boris: adultery see individual lover name”? Bower traces Johnson’s complex character back to an unhappily unorthodox childhood.

The small clique of people at the top are also exposed with waspish irreverence by Sasha Swire in Diary of an MP’s Wife ( Little, Brown, £20). Lady Swire may be a social pariah in Notting Hill and Chipping Norton right now but will, I suspect, like Alan Clark before her, be remembered for her indiscretions long after most of the current cabinet. Left Out by Gabriel Pogrund and Patrick Maguire (Bodley Head, £ 18.99) is a fascinating exposé of Labour under Jeremy Corbyn’s leadership and gives an insight into how the darling of Glastonbury handed the Tories an 80 seat majority 18 months later. At the bottom of the social ladder, Bit of a Stretch ( Atlantic, £ 8.99) by former HMP Wandsworth inmate Chris Atkins gives a brutally honest description of life in Britain’s prisons.

The knock- on effects of Brexit will be felt most keenly in the countryside and for the best analysis of the chlorinated chicken debate, and much more, read Tim Lang’s Feeding Britain (Pelican, £25). He displays rare sense in his proposals for root-and-branch reform, from the plate back to the field. The most shocking fact here is that we spend more on treating obesity than we do on the police. The impacts of Defra policies on some of the most vulnerable communities in upland Britain, and the farmed environment, are exposed in beautiful prose by James Rebanks in English Pastoral (Allen Lane, £20).

Another big story has been the rise in support for separatism in Scotland and, to a lesser extent, in Wales. Pundits wanting to pronounce on the Union should read Iain Milligan’s highly enjoyable Sovereign of the Isles ( Unicorn, £25), which explains how we came to be a United Kingdom in the first place and how it evolved to its present, increasingly disunited, state.

Covid has, of course, been the big story of the year. I have been wishing that everyone had read Charlie Spedding’s Stop Feeding Us Lies ( stopfeedinguslies. com, £ 9.95), which came out just before the pandemic struck. His thesis that we have poor immune systems and a type 2 diabetes epidemic because government advice leads us to consume too many carbohydrates really resonates.

Covid has also made us appreciate the farmers, supermarket workers, carers and others who make the world go round and wonder why all the bureaucrats were employed in the first place. David Goodhart, author of The Road to Somewhere, has written a timely follow- up, Head, Hand, Heart ( Allen Lane, £20), that calls for a rebalancing of the way that society views people who do manual and caring work, rather than cognitive work.

We can only imagine what the late, great Christopher Booker would have made of it all – but we do have his posthumous Groupthink ( Bloomsbury, £ 20), which helps us to recognise the madness of crowds and the herd instinct of our political masters. Who better to guide us out of our covidystopia?