Here's the remarkably saccharine cover of Tony Blair's memoirs. The casual photo is bad enough, but it's that title -- The Journey, more apt for a reality TV star than a prime minister -- that's truly shocking.

Compare Blair's title to Margaret Thatcher's dignified and elegant The Downing Street Years or Harold Wilson's Memoirs: the Making of a Prime Minister, and it becomes clear just how bad it is.

The book falls from the tree in September and Blair describes it as "an attempt to inform and shape current and future thinking as much as an historical account of the past".

So, just as the former PM used his appearance before the Chilcot inquiry to lay the ground for military action against Iran, we can expect his memoirs to offer further thoughts on today's Middle East.

Reports that the book can be read in less than 45 minutes are yet to be confirmed.

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