* I was a producer on the Radio 5 Live breakfast show when Blair came to power in 1997. The morning after the victory I remember ushering the BBC's political correspondent John Pienaar into the studio for a chat with presenter Peter Allen; he was carrying a piece of A4 paper adorned with five hand-written words, just in case he forgot amid the national euphoria while on air: "Tony Blair is Prime Minister." This is Blair's candid, conversational and anecdotal account of what happened to Britain next.
* Blair's premiership will forever be defined by the Iraq war, and there are lengthy chapters of explanation and justification as well as a few too many reproductions of official reports on it all. But A Journey is also a reminder of the real achievements and wide-reaching changes, especially in education, the health service and Northern Ireland, that he and New Labour brought to a generation weaned on Thatcherism and its diluted successors.
* The insights into pre-power life are entertaining: the time the Blairs mucked up a restaurant booking on holiday in Tuscany and couldn't beg a table for the night: "We dutifully rebooked and went there two nights later. I don't think that ever happened to me again."
* There are some lovely stories about parenting at Number 10, Cherie's independent spirit and even a Leopold Bloom-esque account of the Tony Blair toilet habit: "I am very typically British. I like to have time and comfort in the loo. The bathroom is an important room and I couldn't live in culture that doesn't respect it. Anyway, that's probably more than you ever wanted to know."
* The John Prescott mentions are the funniest and also among the most thought-provoking in the book: "At Cabinet, he would occasionally sit like a grumbling volcano ready to erupt at any moment... John would make some slightly off-colour remark if he was in a sour mood. I would then bring (Patricia Hewitt) in again, just for the sheer entertainment of watching him finally explode... He genuinely made me laugh."
* Prescott's affair with his diary secretary also prompts some candid observations about politics and adultery, which may have caused Cherie to raise an eyebrow or even two: "Then there is the moment of encounter, so exciting, so naughty, so lacking in self-control. Suddenly you are transported out of your world... and just put on a remote desert island of pleasure. You become a different person, if only for an instant, until returned back to reality. Which is not by way of an excuse, incidentally."
* There is always fun to be found among the weighty duties of State. Try not to laugh out loud when reading Blair's account of dealing with some of the more intractable characters in Northern Ireland: "The Drumcree people were the unreasonable of the unreasonable of the unreasonable. In the premier league of unreasonableness, they left every other faction, in every other dispute, gasping in their wake."
* Blair's fear and loathing of Prime Minister's Questions is eye-opening. If a trained barrister as confident and publicly-assured as he is was reduced to a bag of nerves, what hope for the rest of them: "PMQs was the most nerve-racking, discombobulating, nail-biting, bowel-moving, terror-inspiring, courage-draining experience in my prime ministerial life, without question."
* His account of his relationship with President Bush is revealing. That famously overheard "Yo, Blair!" greeting is easily explained and dismissed. Bush also comes out well on a personal, non-political level; when family and friends of Blair's visited Washington after Blair had left office, Bush was a gracious host: "He came out, showed them round, took each one into the Oval Office, had a picture and was thoroughly and completely charming. Didn't need to do it. Wasn't pushed. Just did it. So ‘Yo, Blair’ was a joke; but unfortunately only I got it!"
* Blair's deteriorating relationship with Gordon Brown forms the spine of the book. They started as inseparable allies on a high-minded road to power; they ended on barely-speaking terms with Brown plotting Blair's downfall on every resentful page. Blair emerges as a fair-minded, generous and, yes, honest leader. He is clearly baffled why the Labour party was so ready to replace him with someone who was always going to be difficult for the public to elect as PM - "an extraordinary and weird self-inflicted myopia".
* By the time Blair finally handed over to Brown, I had moved from the BBC to Sky Sports News and he'd played a big part in winning the Olympics for London. I remember watching his final PMQs in the office. His last words in the Commons, that place of low skulduggery, summed him up: "I wish everyone, friend or foe, well. That is that. The end."
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