It’s one book for Dave, another 37 for the rest

David Cameron, the Tory leader, is going to have to try much harder if he wants to persuade voters that his party really does stand for 'fairness'. For while he has been spotted on the beach in Cornwall idling away with the newest James Bond book, Devil May Care, every Conservative MP has just been issued with a summer reading list of 37 heavyweight titles on history and political philosophy designed to make them better followers of the party line.

Drawn up by Keith Simpson, the party's foreign affairs spokesman, the list is advisory rather than compulsory. But it doesn't offer anything in the way of light relief, with titles such as Good Business, a guide to corporate social responsibility, Cameron on Cameron by Dylan Jones, and Terror and Consent: The War for the Twenty-First Century by Philip Bobbitt.

But it could be worth MPs persisting. The Sunday Times did, and its staff came up with one vintage cautionary tale in Candida Slater's Good Manners and Bad Behaviour: The Unofficial Rules of Diplomacy, which is on the list.

It reads: "There is the story... of the French ambassador's wife who sat next to a former British foreign secretary at a grand dinner at Lancaster House. As soon as the dinner was over, she stormed into the ladies' loo, complaining in voluble French that he had propositioned her. 'But surely,' her companion protested, 'you expected this?'

"'Naturally,' she retorted, eyes flashing, 'but not before the soup!'"