The political wife’s memoir as a class can be divided in two: there’s the inspirational sort you would have to be paid to read – and yes, I am thinking of Michelle Obama (query: has anyone, anywhere actually read her stuff?) – and there’s the kind that takes no prisoners, gets serialised in the papers and starts feuds. It is in this latter category that Sarah Vine’s How Not to Be a Political Wife (she was married to Michael Gove) triumphantly belongs.

The excerpts from it in the Mail were high-class entertainment – when’s the last time anyone actually talked about the importance of salaries in a political memoir? – and resulted in a most enjoyable feud. The book was reviewed with feline malice by Sasha Swire, whose own brilliant Diary of an MP’s Wife had been given a pasting by Sarah Vine – and she in turn got a going-over from Nadine Dorries who weighed in on Sarah’s behalf. The rest of us called in the popcorn and sat down to enjoy the fun; meanwhile, Sasha Swire’s book did very nicely in renewed sales, thank you. Vine says of that book that it’s “gossipy more than anything. Mine is more emosh,” – her children’s youth-speak for emotional – “it’s about the feelings.”

It’s not just the feelings, though. One reason why Sarah Vine’s book is so enjoyable is that her inspiration was not Michelle O but the diaries of Chips Channon. “They’re such a rich tapestry,” she says. “Not …