'Amid the cologne, a gift I did like was less expected. On a set of CDs the ace BBC Radio 4 newsreader Peter Donaldson narrates, unabridged, a small gem of a satire on the politics of the era now closing. It’s called Anthony Blair: Captain of School and the book is out too. Written by a former foreign correspondent, John Morrison, who has toured the globe with our PM, this is a Boy’s Own story about a mythical minor public school, St Stephen’s: an allegory of the Palace of Westminster. The school’s houses are thinly veiled references to our political parties. Young Anthony becomes Head of House and finally Captain of School, rooming at first with a gloomy boy called Brown.

What makes the story such fun is that it is not so much sour as cheeky: a gently teasing humour that invites chuckles of recognition, not shouts of derision. As the story begins we learn that Anthony’s only boyhood experience of hunting was a failed attempt to catapult a rabbit, smashing a glass pane. He told his mother he had seen some rabbits breaking the glass: an accident during their early-morning jumping practice. Donaldson’s voice, mellow and mischievous, is just right.' COMPLETE AND UNABRIDGED -- THE AUDIOBOOK at £9.99 

John Morrison's satirical novel is now an unabridged audiobook read by Radio 4 newsreader Peter Donaldson (pictured below) with a running time of 6 hours 42 minutes.To buy the download for only £9.99, click here:                                                                                             http://www.spokennetwork.co.uk/Title.aspx?titleId=7121

or here:

http://www.thelisteningzone.com/p/9780955027628

To hear or download a complete chapter free via the Guardian website, click here:

http://books.guardian.co.uk/podcasts/0,,1813297,00.html

   PETER DONALDSON    

           Narrator

This recording is available on a  6-CD set published by Black Pig Books for £19.99.  ISBN 0-9550276-2-4  You can buy directly from the publisher by sending a cheque for £19.99 (P&P free) payable to John Morrison to Black Pig Books, 19 Bayham Rd, Sevenoaks Kent TN13 3XD

A Black Pig Books engineer checks the quality of a CD before despatch to all corners of the Empire

'Brilliant' -- Christina Hardyment in The Times

'Anthony Blair Captain of School' is a brilliant skit in the style of Rudyard Kipling's Stalky & Co. Bright-eyed and bushy-tailed, Blair arrives at St. Stephen's eager to be the most popular boy in a school that has become distinctly slack under the demented theologian Dr Bush, the cricket-mad school captain Major and a dissolute gang of prefects. Brown, his dour Scottish study mate shows him the ropes, Matron Boothroyd twinkles approval, and soon, using tips from his toast fag Mandelson and his own advanced skills in self-justification, Blair rises to become head of school himself, and to send the Rifle Corps into disastrous action in the town slum, known as Mesopotamia. Written by the political journalist John Morrison and full of telling cameos of Westminster figures, this audiobook is even funnier for being read with calmly deadpan authority by the newsreader Peter Donaldson.' - Christina Hardyment