From 'How Parliament Works' to John le Carre: MPs most borrowed books

Every Wednesday, Alex Johnson delves into a unique collection of titles

Commons knowledge: the mission of the lower house library is to ‘contribute to a well-informed democracy’ (Tomás Robertson/Commons Library)

Each year, the House of Commons Library puts together a list of its most borrowed books by MPs and their staff.

The most recent one, in descending order of the number of withdrawals, is topped (as it has been most years since 2008) by the useful self-help guide How Parliament Works.

How Parliament Works by Robert Rogers and Rhodri Walters
Why the Tories Won: The Inside Story of the 2015 Election by Tim Ross
Speaking Out: Lessons in Life and Politics by Ed Balls
Coalition: The Inside Story of the Conservative-Liberal Democrats Coalition Government by David Laws
The Second Machine Age: Work, Progress and Prosperity in a Time of Brilliant Technologies by Erik Brynjolfsson and Andrew McAfee
Parliament Ltd: A Journey to the Dark Heart of British Politics by Martin Williams
Can the Welfare State Survive? by Andrew Gamble
Capital in the Twenty-First Century by Thomas Piketty
This is London by Ben Judah
Politics: Between the Extremes by Nick Clegg
Joseph Chamberlain: A Most Radical Imperialist by Travis L Crosby
How to be a Parliamentary Researcher by Robert Dale
How to be a Government Whip by Helen Jones
Why Nations Fail: The Origins of Power, Prosperity, and Poverty by Daron Acemoglu and James A Robinson
Them and Us: Changing Britain – Why We Need a Fair Society by Will Hutton
Student Power! The Radical Days of the English Universities by Esmee Sinead Hanna
The Spirit Level: Why More Equal Societies Almost Always Do Better by Richard Wilkinson and Kate Pickett
The Rise of the Robots: Technology and the Threat of Mass Unemployment by Martin Ford
Parliament: The Biography. Vol 1: Ancestral Voices by Chris Bryant

This self-help guide has topped the list since 2008 (Routledge)

Another regular popular choice – though less so in the past couple of years – has been Paul Flynn’s step-by-step guide to being a successful MP.

As Brandon Robshaw, reviewing the book in The Independent, puts it: “This wry, sardonic account reveals that MPs must have the most arcane, illogical, inefficient, unreasonable and capricious set of rules governing their working lives of any job in the world.”

Understandably, the borrowings list over the years is dominated by serious political and economic titles, plus a good spread of political biographies (Alan Johnson’s autobiographies often appear and Roy Jenkins: A Well-Rounded Life by John Campbell topped the list in 2014).

The only other entries have been:

Culture and the Death of God by Terry Eagleton (sixth most borrowed) in 2015
Rough Guide to Berlin by John Gawthrop (third) in 2014
Alex Ferguson: My Autobiography (equal fourth) in 2014
Mindful Manifesto: How Doing Less and Noticing More Can Help us Thrive in a Stressed-out World by Jonty Heaversedge (equal sixth) in 2013
Lonely Planet: Myanmar by John Allen (equal sixth) in 2013
Feral: Searching for Enchantment on the Frontiers of Rewilding by George Monbiot (seventh in 2013)

There is a lighter side to MPs’ reading, though, as revealed in a poll by Blackwells in 2016 of the members’ summer reading intentions.

Topped by Boris Johnson’s biography of Winston Churchill, The Churchill Factor, the list was full of titles about the Second World War and America, but there was also room in the suitcases for the following novels and poetry:

The Night Manager by John le Carre
I Am Pilgrim by Terry Hayes
The Poisonwood Bible by Barbara Kingsolver
The Art of Falling by Kim Moore
The Wolf Trial by Neil Mackay
The Immigration Handbook by Caroline Smith
A Spool of Blue Thread by Anne Tyler
Grandpa’s Great Escape by David Walliams

‘A Book of Book Lists’ by Alex Johnson, £7.99, British Library Publishing

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