While Lance Price was Alasdair Campbell's deputy in the Downing Street Press Office at the end of the 1990s and then Director of Communications at the Labour Party, he kept an informal journal of his experiences.

Published in full for the first time, these controversial diaries offer a rare and unfiltered perspective of Tony Blair as Prime Minister and the kind of government he runs. We see ministers, from Blair down, behaving as human beings - ambitious, vain, obsessed with image and petty rivalries - but also industrious, determined to succeed and all too aware of the price of failure.

This is New Labour at the height of its power, with a huge majority and a feeble opposition, a government elected with high expectations and yet beset by self-inflicted wounds. THE SPIN DOCTOR'S DIARY reveals in detail for the first time the overwhelming obsession with spin; the scandals and resignations; the bitter rows - not just between Blair and Gordon Brown, but also over who should be Mayor of London, the Euro, devolution, public spending and much mroe besides.

Lance Price describes what he did and what he saw with refreshing wit and candour. This is politics stripped bare - not always a pretty sight, but an unforgettable one.