And this is the photo of the mobile charms & Shepherd's Crook bookmarks. These are amazingly good bookmarks - they hook over the back of the spine of the book, and hold in place very firmly. And the other brilliant thing is because they're all unique, if you give them to your family at Christmas, you'll know who's reading what book. Coming from a family who argue about who's going to read what first, this is quite an advantage!

Talking of reading, I currently have three books on the go. A biography of Mrs Beeton, that I have to admit is a lot duller than I expected it to be, a thing called 'The Historian', which apparently is about Dracula being a librarian - to be fair to this, I did try to start it Friday at about three a.m. when it was quiet, and frankly I don't think I got any further than about two or three pages into it, as my eyes just went boggly and I couldn't carry on reading. But what I'm really reading, frankly, are Watergate books. I'm a big Watergate freak, and I saw All the Presidents Men on the box the other day (for about the nth time) so I ended up re-reading the book (again for about the nth time) so having piqued my interest, I went looking for what's new in the field since Mark Felt was revealed to be deep throat. Now I'll admit my local Waterstones is pretty much king of the mundane, run of the mill and bog standard book shop. It's bang smack in the middle of Bristol, and ok, there's not a lot of room there. Hint to the ruling cadre at Waterstones - when they finish rebuilding Broadmead, get in there, and get a bigger shop! But I have to say you go in there looking for books on pretty much anything beyond say romcom, pretty pretty redecorating, a crime book or whatever - if you want something a bit more than mundane, run of the mill or bog standard, then go elsewhere. You won't find it at Waterstones. But I was pushed for time, so went in looking & could only find Bob Woodward's book. He appears to admit that he left it to late to go pushing as to exactly what it was that made Felt feel he had to do it - to be the source in the garage, backing up what Woodward & Bernstein turned up. I have to say that's such a tragedy. To have lost the first hand account of the motivations of this man is an almighty loss to history, although I guess it's always possible that Felt could have left something somewhere that might turn up.

I always think it's so odd as well, the attitude that my parents had to John Dean. I mean, we are English here, and had only the most distant, mouths agog type of attitude to it at the time - I mean it was flabbergasting that a real live President could have been such a crook, but I can remember Mum & Dad talking about Dean in terms of being a traitor. They didn't seem to see anything at all admirable about the fact that he actually told the truth. So bizarre that. There they are, this stolidly middle class couple, apalled at what's been going on, the daily revelations in the paper etc, yet instead of applauding Dean's ability to admit what had been going on, to come clean and tell the truth, he was always referred to as a 'traitor.' I think it's a sort of attitude that is parallel to the horror that Philby caused at being a real traitor. Now don't get out of hand here, I'm talking about attitudes to, not the reality of traitorhood. What Philby did was totally unforgivable because there's no doubt people died because of his actions, to the best of my knowledge, Dean didn't kill anyone! But it's the whole male gang type thing, the loyalty bond. Philby was part of the 50s white male establishment in Britain, end of empire, supposed to be England my England to the moment he takes the bullet to the heart. Yet to the Cambridge spies, conscience ruled above loyalty to the country. This is of course, based entirely on what they said, and has not one whit of bearing on what they actually felt/thought/believed internally. Dean was presumably a man of some similar degree of conscience, overbourne in his actions at the moment when the people around him where behaving in what was an extraordinary manner. When it all fell apart - now that's the question. Was he a rat looking for an escape craft and going 'me first, me first!' or was he genuinely saying I can't live with this anymore, someone has to tell the truth?

I don't know, and frankly I'm never likely to. I can't see myself ever likely to be in a position to ask him! But I would have loved to be able to sit down and ask Mark Felt why. And I can't help that it's a total dereliction of his duty to history that Bob Woodward didn't start think about this earlier - although to be fair, he gives a pretty good account of why he felt he wasn't able to. If you feel someone's bugged at you, you're not inclined to go busting in there, and demanding they explain themselves. But under the circumstances, my God, what a loss.