A number of commenters and emailers have told me to shut up about my book, which I am apparently covering excessively. Might I make a couple of suggestions. First, have a look at the url: stephenpollard.net It's a site, you'll notice, written by me. And it is focused on pieces wrtiten by me, of which my book is the largest I have ever undertaken. So guess what? I'm linking to pieces about the book.

Here's the second suggestion. If you don't like that - go somewhere else. There's a good few million other sites from which you can choose.

Yes, I'll be covering some other subjects soon, but at the moment my days are somewhat dominated by the fall out from my book, and that's all I've time to cover.

There. Got that off my chest.

The Guardian has a piece by Martin Kettle prompted by my book, which argues that

If David Blunkett is still in his job in the new year, he will be more isolated than at any stage in his ministerial career. He will also be more dependent than before on Tony Blair's goodwill. That may be a double-edged sword. Even in Downing Street, not everyone is as robust as the prime minister in his support. John Prescott's denunciation yesterday on the Today programme will have had several cabinet ministers openly cheering over their cornflakes. Labour's senior women are especially angry.

Prescott yesterday became the first cabinet minister to say in public what many have been saying in private for days. Disaffected backbenchers such as Diane Abbott and Peter Kilfoyle have condemned the home secretary too, but many others share their instincts. The mood across the party is unquestionably that Blunkett has been diminished by the Kimberly Quinn case and his indiscretions to his biographer, Stephen Pollard. One former minister, a Blunkett admirer, confides that he is taken aback by the lukewarm parliamentary support.

Ministers say they have been astonished by Blunkett's "monumental arrogance". But the conversations with Pollard, not the Quinn affair, are doing the damage at Westminster. You might say such things to your wife or paramour, people there say, but you would think twice about saying them even to a journalist you trust, never mind to a man with a tape recorder and a book to sell. Blunkett has revealed something about himself that will be hard to unlearn.

...But Blair's support is fundamentally political. Pollard's account leaves no room for doubt on that score. Blunkett was sent to the Home Office to carry out Blair's demand for the law-and-order services to deliver. And that is exactly what he has done, sometimes badly, sometimes well, though rarely as well as Blunkett and his acolytes have boasted to Pollard. Sometimes it works. But sometimes it is hard to tell whether he is more a bully or a bull in a china shop.

...Yet, as Kilfoyle brutally reminded Blunkett yesterday, nobody is indispensable. And that is the true significance of the events of the past three weeks. Blunkett is a big figure in British politics. But it could be downhill from here on. At the outset, the Blunkett affair was about a relatively narrow, though indicative, point about his lover's nanny's visa. But now it is also about Blunkett's style of politics and even, unfairly, about him as a man. After Pollard's book, it is hard to imagine that he will now go on to greater things.

There's also a Steve Bell cartoon.

The Times has a long review by Edwina Currie:

...[T]his is an eyewatering performance. Yet these are the fruits of “hours of candid interviews” with his biographer, Stephen Pollard,in which Blunkett was “extremely forthcoming and helpful”. The words are dynamite, and could sink him.

Pollard first met Blunkett at a 1995 Fabian seminar and was intrigued by the paradox: on the one hand, a traditionalist, on the other, the creator of the Socialist Republic of South Yorkshire. Blunkett’s career, he suggests, is a “metaphor for Labour itself”, in that it has moved from being loony left-wing to almost more right-wing than the Tories. “The Tories were right,” Blunkett now says unambiguously of Michael Howard’s Home Office (page 276). Labour’s league and pupil tests are Conservative policies carried out with far more rigour than the Major Government dared use. Yet he is still a supporter of unilateralism and an implacable opponent of the bourgeoisie who pontificate from ivory towers (or Islington).

...Pollard is clearly a fan, highlighting the romantic, sensitive side of Blunkett and printing several of his poems. Also on show is what the journalist Anthony Howard has called a “natural bully”. Blunkett relishes his reputation for plain speaking: “I’ll just say what I think and if people don’t like it, they can lump it.”

There is a big ego at work here, one that takes umbrage at being patronised and is not averse to bad-mouthing anyone he deems incompetent. I don’t think Pollard trapped him into candid talk; I reckon Blunkett was only too eager. That may be because he sees himself as brilliant with journalists. Where most politicians keep their distance, Blunkett courts them. He takes family holidays with Paul Potts, the chief executive of the Press Association and a friend since student days; he is “close” to Paul Dacre of the Daily Mail, and to Les Hinton, the chief executive of News International, the parent company of The Times.

...The Kimberley Fortier/Quinn business will be his downfall, but not because his stated support for marriage conflicts with his lover’s married state; the Conservative Opposition is in no position to criticise. For most people he is a sad figure, like Othello, one who loved not wisely but too well. The affair has, however, invited scrutiny of minor issues such as the nanny’s visa application. I would rather the criticism focused on why there is such a long waiting list for visas in the first place, but the media, like Blunkett, prefer to personalise issues, so he will be a target. If he weathers this row, there will be another. Sooner or later the loyalty he needs from colleagues whom he has insulted, in this book and elsewhere, will melt away.

Blunkett says he cannot imagine what he would do outside politics, his life for almost 40 years. He has toyed with replacing Blair, but that would take a miracle now. As long as he is an electoral asset, Blair will keep him, but soon after the election Blunkett will be 60 and the next generation will be baying at his heels. If he wishes to retire with accolades and sympathy, he could do worse than spend Christmas listening to a tape of this book, treat it as a fine epitaph and go.

And on Sunday, there was this review by Andy McSmith (author of a superb smaller biography of Blunkett in 1996).