In his lifetime, Tony Benn was demonised as a dangerous left field politician but, since his demise, he has become a secular saint. This book probably shows more of the sanctified Tony than the demon, although, the spirit is still in evidence and sparks from time to time.

When one considers that TB was 76 years old at the start of this diary, it is amazing to read the amount of work that he still managed to achieve. He had left parliament by this stage, but pursued his belief in equality and peace to the very end: some weeks he was crisscrossing the country on a daily basis for meetings and always had time to help the less fortunate. This is all very praiseworthy, but the thing that I would most like to take from these pages is his ability to differentiate between the policies and the person of his political opponent. Benn has a good word for almost everybody he met and, those few for whom he struggled to be kind (mainly, Mrs Thatcher and Tony Blair), he tends to refrain from personal comment, rather than demean.

The diaries also make clear that Benn saw through Tony Blair whilst I, and many more, were trying desperately to give him the benefit of the doubt. Benn recognised that Blairism would, eventually, tear the party asunder. Benn had pushed off this mortal coil before the fiasco of Miliband's end and the election for a new leader, which is reaching its climax as I write, but his perspective upon the Blair years highlights the inevitability of the depths to which Labour has sunk.

So far, I have concentrated upon the political issues but, as someone who, like us all, is inevitably heading towards later life, Benn provides a wonderful series of vignettes of life as Father Time takes his toll. I much admire the manner in which TB recognises the passing of the years and regularly writes that he must begin to take life a little more easily. The next entry is, almost inevitably, a list of a dozen or more meetings to be attended in the next month - often with speeches to be written, journeys planned and, in many cases, diplomatic sanction acquired.

This book was a bitter sweet read and the knowledge that there will not be a further addition to the series gives much sadness, however, one must be grateful that he had the nouse to leave his story in the compelling immediacy of the diary format. ( )