David Cameron’s For the Record ends where the sorriest three years in modern British history begin

It’s fun to look for what’s missing in a memoir; the forgotten egos, the policy howlers buried for posterity. Some omissions are accidental. When Tony Blair published his autobiography in 2010, he raised eyebrows by neglecting to mention his celebrated blue-skies thinker, John Birt. Over more than 700 pages, For the Record is punctilious and dutiful in name-checking the many fallen Cameroonian foot-soldiers who sacrificed themselves in the cause of Conservative modernisation.

It is a testament to David Cameron’s great qualities — his quick wit, habitual cheeriness and calmness under pressure — just how many of them there are. No one working in No. 10 expected to become close pals with the PM; perfectly happy in his own skin, with a young family to which he was devoted and long-standing friends of his own, he had little need to forge personal bonds with the courtiers, most of them ten to 20 years younger, who crowded into his study for the 8.30