A riveting combination of diary entry and commentary on the Blair government since its re-election in 2001, this groundbreaking book by former Foreign Secretary and Labour Leader of the Commons, Robin Cook, is the most important political publication of the decade.

This book is great fun to read. It has the authentic touch of both the great and the trivial issues that dominate the daily life and the grind of ministers in any government" Guardian 'Robin Cook's Point of Departure provides the best insight yet into the workings of the Blair cabinet. His diary entries are highly readable, and sometimes very funny' Elinor Goodman, Books of the Year, Sunday Telegraph 30/11 'Cook does not accuse Blair of deliberate deception. Cook's restraint makes an even more damning case. He guides the reader towards a devastating guilty verdict on the Prime Minister without making too many sweeping judgments himself. While narrating a tragic and humiliating failure in foreign policy, Cook also manages to be very funny' Independent on Sunday, Political Books of the Year 14/12 'Instant history can tell us how events appeared before they became obscured in the fog of hindsight. For hindsight is the great enemy of the historian. We forget, all too easily, that what is now in the past once lay in the future. Instant history, especially when, as with Robin Cook's Point of Departure, it is based on the diary of a participant, is history written when the outcome was still unknown' FT, UK Politics 'The best-written and most thoroughly researched of the post-election batch of cabinet biographies,' Peter Kellner, Evening Standard. 'This thoroughly researched and well-crafted biography has both revelations and insights to offer about the life of one of the most intriguing members of this government,' Andrew Rawnsley, Observer 'An admirable instant biography, taking in all its subject's trials and tribulations since he came to office,' Anthony Howard's political books of the year, 1998, Sunday Times "Devastating on how Blair found himself taking Britain to war in the shadow of President Bush, after 'grossly distorting', in Cook's phrase, the threat of Saddam's weapon's to the world" Sunday Times 29/8