Sympathetic telling of Blunkett's amazing life

David Blunkett, by Stephen Pollard, Hodder & Stoughton, €28.80.

David Blunkett has always refused to let his blindness stop him from experiencing things. During his spare time (of which he now has a lot more), he sometimes gets behind the wheel of a car and drives it at great speed over open land, just for the sheer thrill of it.

It is hard not to admire this kind of bloody-minded recklessness, a characteristic ...