All heart, trust and gut feeling

‘To me, he was sort of like a unicorn,’ writes Mrs Obama, looking back on her courtship days with Barack. He was affectionate, loving, secure and brainy. Very brainy. ‘He consumed volumes of political philosophy as if it were beach reading.’ He was laid back but his sense of purpose was strong. ‘Barack was serious without being self-serious. He was breezy in his manner but powerful in his mind. It was a strange, stirring combination.’ In a languid late-night moment, she asks a penny for his thoughts. ‘Oh, I was just thinking about income inequality.’

This book takes you right back to those days when we all fell in love with Obama. The weirdly effective thing about a First Lady — or theoretically a First Husband, would he were imminent — is that they operate on the very softest side of politics, all heart, trust and gut feeling. The less overtly political a spouse is, the more effective they are, crossing the political divide, disarming, humanising.