Morning:
8°c
So much for social diversity. David Cameron has given his MPs a summer reading list of 37 titles, which includes a book by his Etonian contemporary David Runciman, a memoir by Cameron's OE cousin Ferdinand Mount, and no fewer than two books about another famous OE, Boris Johnson. And there's one about David Cameron himself. Surely even Tory MPs deserve a break from their own party leader? Cameron's fellow parliamentarians would be better advised to pack more relevant titles.
For a primer on backstabbing, you could do no worse than read Maupassant's novel Bel-Ami. It is a brilliantly Machiavellian work of fiction about one man's rise up the slippery pole: Georges Duroy gets to the top by sleeping with the wives of powerful journalists and newspaper proprietors.
If instead MPs want to know how to spot a wrong 'un like Conrad Black or a dodgy Russian plutocrat, there is no better guide than Anthony Trollope's novel The Way We Live Now. Its antihero, Augustus Melmotte Esq, is stupendously rich but nobody knows the source of his wealth. He worms his way into high society and eventually takes a seat in Parliament. The royalty and aristocracy are only too eager to attend his parties and become directors of his businesses before his true colours are revealed. Like all parliamentary careers, his ends in tears.
For the ¸ber-green novel, there's JG Ballard's fictional debut, The Drowned World, which is set in a future where most of the world is under water. Written in 1963, it presciently predicts that rising temperatures will melt the polar icecaps, causing vast tides of silt to dam up oceans, drowning parts of the world and landlocking others - and there won't be a husky or hoodie left in sight to hug.
To enjoy the imminent demise of Gordon Brown, there's always Henry James's The Turn of the Screw, which, rather like Labour, lends itself to dozens of different interpretations. Is the governess of the story unbalanced (ie psychologically flawed) and do the ghosts only exist in her imagination? Given that our PM is now comparing himself to Heathcliff, why not reacquaint yourself with Emily Brontë's Wuthering Heights?
To understand how to deliver a more compassionate Etonian society, they could try The Importance of being Eton, by Nick Fraser. Meanwhile Jeffrey Archer's latest novel, A Prisoner of Birth, contains an invaluable tip on what to do with your old school tie should you not be an Old Etonian: use it as a tourniquet to mainline heroin.
Or then again, MPs might try Down and Out in Paris and London, written by an Etonian who knew all about social diversity - namely George Orwell.
