How Not to Be a Political Wife: Sarah Vine offers 'ringside seat' to British government

Book cover of How Not To Be A Political Wife — Memoir unpacking Cameron-era politics is 'required reading'

(Image credit: HarperElement)

"Put down your 250th anniversary copy of 'Pride and Prejudice' and toss Bill Clinton's thriller, 'The First Gentleman', to one side," said Melanie McDonagh in The London Standard.

The only book that's "required reading right now" is Sarah Vine's memoir of "politics in the Cameron era" – though "it's just as much social and personal" as political. The former Mrs Michael Gove and her husband were "terrifically matey" with David and Sam in the "early days of the Cameron ascent". The couples holidayed in Ibiza, shared the school run and "had a high old time"; Vine had a "girl crush" on Sam.

Yet over time, she came to feel that she and Michael weren't quite good enough for their friends. As she found herself performing "administrative duties", or serving wine at the couple's drinks parties, she began to feel less like "a friend" than "a fixer" – or even "staff". Then came Gove's decision to back Leave, which ended the friendship for good. Now divorced, with fewer friends in high places, Vine wrote the book, she says, "because she had nothing to lose" – which is what makes it "so brilliant".

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I have long admired Michael Gove, and feel he's had "a deeply unfair press", said Simon Heffer in The Telegraph. This memoir performs a valuable service in putting the "record about him straight" – while exposing Cameron's unprincipled cronyism. Yet in other ways, it's a "strange book". Vine lays a great deal of "personal upset bare" – including the misery her ex-husband's prominence caused to their children. Will they thank her for this in years to come? And as she "harps on" about the class differences between her and the Camerons, she reveals a "chip on her shoulder the size of Yorkshire". Cameron's "father was a stockbroker, not the Duke of Devonshire". She really should "pull herself together".

It is, in fact, the personal sections that make this book worth reading, said Gaby Hinsliff in The Guardian. Vine writes "unsparingly and grippingly" about her difficult childhood, her "awful postnatal depression", and the "slow death" of her marriage. When it comes to politics, she often loses perspective – writing of Brexit as if it were a minor "political disagreement", not a fundamental issue for the country.