Clarissa Eden Dorothy Macmillan and Elizabeth Home now seem figures from a vanished

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Clarissa Eden, Dorothy Macmillan and Elizabeth Home now seem figures from a vanished age of the tweedy upper class. The arrival in 1964 of Harold Wilson and his shy poet wife, Mary, ushered in a new kind of Britain: more modern, less class-bound No 10 spouses began to develop more independence of action. The robust Audrey Callaghan was Chair of Great Ormond Street hospital during the Winter of Discontent. Norma Major became a respected author during her tenure.Since 1990, say Booth and Haste, media pressures have spiralled.

While Dorothy Macmillan could get away with ill-fitting tweeds and scant make-up, later wives have had to think like a catwalk model. Norma Major was attacked for wearing the same blue suit twice, but she learned quickly on the job, as did Booth herself. Carole Caplin or no Carole Caplin, how can we criticise anyone, thrust into the limelight through love and marriage, who tries to look their best - when not doing so occasions such savagery?This interesting piece of social history is a generous gift from Booth to all the "invisible witnesses" who came before her, and will come after. More public money should be made available for this odd job, which blurs private and public in such frustrating ways, and a clearer set of guidelines provided to new girls - and the odd boy - about what is expected on the official side. Let's hope that Cherie Booth can get some reforms under way before the next unfortunate incumbent stands at No.

10 dazzled by the flash bulbs.Personally, I find it it amazing that anyone survives life there without having a nervous breakdown. Faced with similar pressures, I suspect that most of the columnists who currently sneer at each slip of the tongue or the occasional bad hair day would be shuffled off to the Priory by the end of the second week. Fortunately, political families tend to be made of much sterner stuff.'A Tribute to Caroline Benn: education and democracy', co-edited by Melissa Benn, is published by Continuum Buy any book reviewed on this site at postage and packing are free in the UK. As existential acts go, sex in a stationery cupboard is fairly low key. For Edward Miller, the anti-hero of Robert Chalmers' new novel, jumping his secretary among the Jiffy bags is the d?enchement of a descent into hell.

The loss of his wife (when she finds out about the secretary) and his job (when a rival paper splashes pictures of Miller snorting coke) is unfortunate. When he burns his family home to the ground and spray-paints his neighbour's car with the word "wannker" [sic], it begins to look like carelessness.Stripped of his dignities, this Kipling-quoting bigot with firm views on queers and immigrants flees abroad, first to Spain and then to the badlands of Florida - where his prejudices rise in person to meet him. Sans passport, sans credit card, sans everything, the scourge of the marginals finds himself not just on the wrong side of the law, but the wrong side of life.If East of Nowhere were a straight tale of a man losing a life and gaining a soul, it would be entertaining enough: Chalmers is a first-rate raconteur with a nose for the absurd. But the author has something more subtle in mind, and holds back from the politically correct one-two his character so richly deserves.By the time we hit Florida, where Miller is held prisoner in a camp for circus freaks run by the sadistic Half-Man (a truly terrifying creation), all moral bets are off.