Every Conservative MP has been issued with a 12-page summer reading list to help them think more like David Cameron.

There are no easy beach reads, thrillers or chick lit novels on this bibliography for ambitious Tories. Instead they will be expected to spend their break in Tuscany or Padstow wading through improving tomes on history and political philosophy — all designed to make better and more “Cameroonian” ministers, should the Conservatives win the next election.

The daunting list of 37 books, stuffed into the Commons pigeonhole of each Tory member shortly before recess, includes the provocatively titled Political Hypocrisy by David Runciman, a Cambridge lecturer who was at Eton with Cameron. It is easy to see why the book was included. Runciman argues there is nothing inherently wrong with double standards in politics and criticises journalists who seek to expose Westminster hypocrites.

Discussing Cameron’s “green hypocrisy” — he has been caught out having his chauffeur follow behind when he cycles to work — Runciman excuses it as “second order” and “trivial”.

The list includes other “new Tory” set texts. Nudge, the hit pop-psychology book by the Americans Richard Thaler and Cass Sunstein, is described as “required reading”. The authors’ argument that voters sometimes need a subtle push to do the right thing has been the inspiration for Tory policies on welfare and tax.

Good Business, a tract on the importance of corporate social responsibility, is included, no doubt in part because its author, Steve Hilton, is Cameron’s close friend and policy adviser.

Cold Cream, the memoirs of Ferdinand Mount, the former head of Margaret Thatcher’s policy unit who is also the cousin of Cameron’s mother, will help eager MPs to understand the privileged social set that spawned the Tory leader.

“A more accurate title for Ferdinand Mount’s memoir would be Rich and Famous People I Have Known,” said John Carey, reviewing it in The Sunday Times.

Among the lighter reads is a book that will give a leg-up to Tory MPs with ambitions to become ministers in the Foreign Office. Candida Slater’s Good Manners and Bad Behaviour: The Unofficial Rules of Diplomacy includes the following example of how not to behave: “There is the story . . . of the French ambassador’s wife who sat next to a former British foreign secretary at a grand dinner at Lancaster House. As soon as dinner was over, she stormed into the ladies’ loo, complaining in voluble French that he had propositioned her. ‘But surely,’ her companion protested, ‘you expected this?’

“‘Naturally,’ she retorted, eyes flashing. ‘But not before the soup!’”

The Tory list was prepared by Keith Simpson, the party’s donnish foreign affairs spokesman and a former lecturer at Sandhurst. He began compiling his annual summer recommendations a few years ago for the benefit of friends, and subsequently, with the blessing of Cameron, began circulating it to all MPs.

“The summer recess beckons with ‘surf and sand’ and a chance to catch up on some good reading,” Simpson begins, before going on to offer a total of 39 literary suggestions. He reassures new MPs that they will not be censured if they fail to complete them all: “The thrusting frontbencher who e-mailed me last time bewailing the fact that he wouldn’t have time to read them all should relax — the whips don’t keep a tally of books read.”

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