This is The Guardian.

The Politics Weekly team is taking a break for the next couple of weeks, but in keeping with one of our traditions, I've got a few summer culture and book recommendations for you.

So here are three books and one album that you should make some time for.

This is a politics podcast, so I'll begin with a quintessential book about modern politics.

Get In by Gabriel

Pogrand and Patrick McGuire is subtitled the inside story of Labor under Starma. But it's really

the story of the Labour Party under someone else. That son of Macroom in County Cork, who made it to London

as a self-described 17-year-old slacker and then became one of the most consequential political figures

of modern times. I'm talking, of course, about the current Downing Street chief of staff

Morgan McSweeney, who, according to some people, gets Kirstama out of his box every morning and

switches him on. If you want a flavour of that relationship and how it works and how light

Starma travels on ideology,

this is a great and often mind-boggling read.

Easily the most compelling book about British politics that so far appeared this year.

Now to our second book.

A country full of seething divisions, government falling into disrepute,

and a population seething with conspiracy theories.

If that sounds familiar,

it's worth bearing in mind that it's as good a description of England in the mid-1600s as it

is of the current state we're in. In fact, it's probably no accident that two of my favourite

books over the last couple of years have been about the English Civil War. The first was the

prize-winning work of history, The Restless Republic,

...