Is Michael Gove writing a tell-all memoir?

Sarah Vine had a bestseller last year with her book How Not to be A Political Wife, which was a mysteriously big hit for what was essentially 305 pages complaining about how Samantha Cameron no longer took her calls. Now it looks like her ex-husband, Lord Gove, could be about to tell all in his very own memoir.

Gove, now editor of the Spectator, updated his entry in the House of Lords’s Register of Interests last week to report receipt of an advance to write a book from publishers Harper Collins. The update, made on April 6, is “in receipt of an advance payment for a book from Harper Collins”, although it being the Lords and not the Commons no amount is required.

Though the topic remains under wraps, a memoir from Gove could well set the cat among the pigeons and make Vine’s revelations about how Jeremy Clarkson once mistook her for a waitress and Samantha Cameron “loved a drink and a fag” seem rather mundane.

Suggested Reading

Gove and Jenrick find a new target: benefits claimants visiting St Paul’s

Rats in a Sack

Gove served Theresa May, Boris Johnson and Rishi Sunak, as well as Cameron, across eight ministerial jobs and 14 years of government. The mysterious new book is just the latest outside job reported by Gove, who was made a peer by Sunak in his resignation honours list.

As well as editing Paul Marshall’s loss-making Spectator, Gove also reports work undertaken for GB News, the Jewish Chronicle, the Daily Mail and on the speakers’ circuit, as well as providing an “ad hoc briefing on UK politics to Signum Global Advisors”, a “political risk advisory firm”, at the end of March.

Gove and Harper Collins were approached for comment on the intriguing new book, but neither has yet to respond.

He has published two previous books: Celsius 7/7, a 2006 discussion of the emergence of Islamism and the West’s response described by the Guardian as “remarkably trite”, and a 1995 biography of Michael Portillo subtitled The Future of the Right. He wasn’t.