The Knives: 'Most true-to-life govt novel I've read'

I've long admired the writing of Chris Deerin, former political editor of the Daily Record, Head of Comment at the Telegraph Media Group, Scottish Daily Mail columnist, now at Oxford's Blavatnik School of Government. So this tweet of his from midweek came as a great boon to me, since it seems to find something to commend in each of the elements from which I compounded the novel: