The 1922 Committee may not excite most people, but this account of its first century – for, as Philip Norton writes, it was actually founded in 1923 – exhibits impeccable scholarship and a degree of charm. Norton has not only, as a Conservative peer, attended the weekly meetings of the ’22 (as it is widely known), but has studied countless documents about it. His book is only the second to cover the history of this organised group of Conservative parliamentarians . The first, by Philip Goodhart, was published for the 50th anniversary, but when Goodhart was writing, in 1973, the ’22 had barely begun to flex its muscle – indeed, it had hardly realised that it had had any muscle to flex. The ’22 was the brainchild of Gervais Rentoul, who became the MP for Lowestoft at the 1922 election. In those days, there was no debate about what the leader of the Conservative Party did: he did what he and his close associates liked.…