Has the rotting cadaver of any British political administration required the pulping of quite so many blameless trees? As soon as Tony Blair left office for rather more lucrative employment, out came an astonishing profusion of self-important, self-exculpatory diaries - the whinges, the gripes, the bitterness and loathing. Most hilarious of them all was Lord Levy's magnificently self-regarding memoir, named - without irony - A Question of Honour (Simon & Schuster £18.99), in which he told us how good he was at table tennis, how he would have solved the Middle East question and how he was underestimated and vilified by almost everyone with whom he came into touch. Hot on its heels was Cherie Blair's boring, barefaced cash-in Speaking for Myself (Little, Brown £18.99), to which we might have replied, don't bother, love, keep it zipped. Which of these two books you considered the more emetic depended solely upon what you had for lunch on the day you read them.

Anyway, by these standards, John Prescott's autobiography Prezza: My Story: Pulling No Punches (Headline £18.99), beautifully ghosted by Hunter Davies, seemed akin to something by de Tocqueville or Montaigne. At least Prescott had a story to tell: the book was about someone interesting who was at heart principled - and it told you stuff you might not have known or guessed. It pulled a few punches, though, particularly when it came to the vexed issue of transgressive sexual intercourse with minxy office slappers in grace-and-favour apartments. Under the table, on the floor, up against the wall, etc; John spared all the details. Andrew Hosken also spared a few too many details in Ken (Arcadia £15.99), his biography of the former mayor of London, Ken Livingstone, but his book was meticulous and nicely written.

Elsewhere we had David Runciman's witty and erudite Political Hypocrisy (Princeton £17.95), which began with the excellent question: “What kind of hypocrite should voters choose as their next leader?” A book to be read alongside The Bumper Book of British Sleaze (Foxcote £14.99), which suggested that the answer was absolutely none of them, ever. Still fresh despite being published last year, this was a terrific compendium of appalling behaviour by those in whom we have entrusted our vote. Meanwhile, my old Radio 4 Today programme colleague Edward Stourton railed against current political shibboleths to entertaining and pointed effect in It's a PC World (Hodder £14.99); hell, even BBC staffers now think the country is too PC. Who, aside from local council employees, doesn't? On a more elevated plane, perhaps, was Michael Burleigh's typically excellent if typically depressing Blood and Rage (HarperPress £25), a dissection of the history of terrorism beginning - naturellement - with Ireland and concluding with Muslim fundamentalists. There are few better writers at work today.

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