Mrs May did not want to speak to journalists or reveal anything personal

Theresa May was “surly”, a “terrible campaigner” and tearful about key decisions during the last election, a book has revealed.

During the campaign Mrs May told aides “I don’t want it to be about me” and was so prickly that one of her most trusted advisers had to become a full-time “minder”, the historian Sir Anthony Seldon discloses.

May at 10, which is serialised in The Times from today, offers a warning to Boris Johnson about how quickly election campaigns can go wrong as he presses for a December poll.

Sir Anthony, who is usually a forgiving biographer of political figures, details how Mr Johnson’s predecessor ignored warnings that her manifesto for the 2017 election was “worse than useless”. She had tears in her