Prelude to Power, the first volume of Alastair Campbell’s unexpurgated diaries, told the story of how Labour won a landslide election victory in 1997. Now, in Power and the People, the serious business of government begins.

With tensions between the party’s big players never far from the surface, Campbell gives the inside track on the big economic, social, political and public-service changes that Labour brought about. One of the government's greatest triumphs, the Northern Ireland peace process, is described here, from the high of the Good Friday Agreement to the deadly low of the Omagh bombing.

But difficult and unexpected events crowd in: sex scandals – Robin Cook at home, Bill Clinton abroad; party-funding scandals; and issues of judgement such as Welsh secretary Ron Davies' ‘moment of madness’ on Clapham Common, and the loan from Geoffrey Robinson which led to the first of Peter Mandelson's resignations from the Cabinet. Then comes tragedy: the death of Princess Diana and the extraordinary period of worldwide mourning that followed.

Meanwhile Campbell paints intimate portraits of the foreign leaders who become central in Blair’s life – Bill Clinton, Helmut Kohl and Gerhard Schroeder, Jacques Chirac, Boris Yeltsin, Nelson Mandela, and the Chinese as they take control of Hong Kong.

Power and the People begins as Tony Blair appoints his first Cabinet, and ends as he mobilises international support against ethnic cleansing in Kosovo. And Campbell is with him every step of the way. He saw it all and here, with the forensic detail that made The Blair Years an acclaimed best-seller, he tells it all. Combining the eye of the journalist with the insight of the strategist, Campbell’s diaries are candid, funny, thoroughly absorbing, and a major contribution to the history of the Blair era.