There are several good reasons to buy and to read this book by Michael Leapman. It is the most comprehensive account in years of Britain’s wildly competitive national newspaper press – by a journalist whose every page is crammed with narrative. It is by a journalist, furthermore, who really attempts to be fair, though his own jerking knee does not always allow him to succeed.

Many good tales I had forgotten or didn’t know are retold: Hugh Cudlipp’s crashing failure with the Sun and, as a manager, the Mirror; Robert Maxwell’s repeated defeats at the hands of Rupert Murdoch; the horrible fate of the Observer after Murdoch’s attempt to buy it had been blocked, and