Jeremy Paxman was born in Yorkshire. He is a journalist, best known for his work presenting Newsnight and University Challenge. Three of his previous books, Friends in High Places, Fish, Fishing and the Meaning of Life and The English, are published in Penguin.

Why don't we like politicians?

The bestselling author of The English stirs things up again with a fascinating look at why governments and politicians so often fail to live up to our expectations --- and their own.

Politicians: they're either untrustworthy, power-hungry, hypocritical misfits or hopeless idealists doomed to languish forever on the backbenches. And it's not just the public and media who think of them this way --- many politicians take a similar view of their colleagues.

They're in a tough, unforgiving business. Those political careers that don't end in defeat or disgrace frequently disappear into obscurity. It can take years to move from activist to candidate and then, if they're very lucky, to MP. And what sort of person likes having their business or family affairs all over the news? Or their mistakes trumpeted and their triumphs belittled? Why do people go into it? And what do they get from it all?

Jeremy Paxman sets out on a quest to answer these baffling questions. And, in the process, gives us a witty, unsparing, but essentially sympathetic portrait of modern politicians and the strange world they inhabit.