Howard left unharmed

Michael Crick has a fearsome reputation as an investigative biographer who will turn up awkward revelations about anyone. It is a tribute to Michael Howard that he emerges from this book almost completely unscathed.

The scoop was meant to be Crick's discovery that Howard's grandfather, a Romanian immigrant, appears to have entered Britain illegally. Howard, however, defused this story by prematurely releasing it.

It is interesting for me to compare the Michael Howard I know with that portrayed by Crick, who captures extremely well the early life in South Wales through Cambridge and the Bar to the House of Commons.

Crick has the qualifications to describe the Byzantine manoeuvring of Cambridge student politics in the early Sixties. But it is fanciful to see Howard's life as a sort of Jeffrey Archer "First among Equals" struggle in a race against Ken Clarke to become Prime Minister.

The gentle side of Howard is allowed to emerge. Throughout the book we are reminded how good he is at sending presents or writing little notes to friends and colleagues. One gets a glimpse, too, of the strong influence that Sandra Howard has in a remarkable marriage.

But Crick also describes Howard's habit of "destructive dialogue". One of his Cambridge friends says: "He was most difficult to persuade that he was wrong, although he was always willing to argue the point - he had a kind of skilful inflexibility,"

The sacking of Howard Flight will come as no surprise to anyone reading this book. Howard always gives complete loyalty to others like Iain Duncan Smith when he is in deep difficulty. Howard expects the same.

While the portrait of the private man is persuasive, Crick's " ruthless" "deeply ambitious" " minister for controversial subjects" seems a cut-out cardboard figure.

The dust jacket of this book proclaims: "Crick makes biographical fairness into a lethal weapon." Why should fairness be lethal? Fairness is not the same as a lot of research, far from it, and this book is, on occasions, unbalanced.

Crick's account of the sacking of the governor of Parkhurst prison leans too much on Ann Widdecombe. Howard's statement is described as "a mixture of mendacity and evasion". This falls short of calling him a liar but still seems harsh. The evidence, to me, suggests that Howard expressed his opinion to Derek Lewis, the Director of Prisons, as he was entitled to do, but did not instruct him, and Lewis changed his mind and accelerated the sacking.