Chris Bryant

The extraordinary turmoil we have seen in British politics in the last few years has set records.

Having spent years as Chair of the Committees on Standards and Privileges, Chris Bryant has had a front-row seat for the battle over standards in parliament. Cronyism, nepotism, conflicts of interest, misconduct and lying: politicians are engaging in these activities more frequently and more publicly than ever before. The result? The work of honest and accountable MPs is tarnished. Public trust is worn thin. And when nearly two thirds of voters think that MPs are out for themselves, democracy is in trouble.

Taking us inside the corridors of Westminster, Code of Conduct examines how parliament has got into this mess and suggests how it might - at last - get its house in order.

We like to think we know the story of how Britain went to war with Germany in 1939, but there is one part of the story that has never been told. It features a group of MPs who repeatedly spoke out against their party and their government's policy of appeasing Hitler and Mussolini. Remarkably, nearly all of them were gay or bisexual. Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain hated them. He had them followed, harassed, spied upon and derided in the press, and called them 'the glamour boys' in reference to their sexuality. They suffered abuse, innuendo and threats of de-selection, yet they spoke out repeatedly against Hitler's territorial ambitions and his treatment of political prisoners and the Jews. In doing so they risked everything, swimming against the overwhelming tide of public opinion at a time when even the suggestion of homosexuality could land you in prison. Forced by the laws of the day to hide their true nature, they ran the danger of exposure on a daily basis. Some of them used their capacity for lying as spies. Others saw brutality in Hitler's camps first hand. Five of them died in action. Without them, this country would never have faced down the Nazis. This is their story.

Before he was a politician, Chris Bryant was an Anglican priest, baptising babies and holding the hands of the dying. Before that, he manned the barricades in Latin America, and before that, he was the scared son of an alcoholic mother and an estranged father.

This is a no-holds-barred account of a minister's truly unconventional life before politics - one that has left Bryant equally at home behind the altar, in sweaty gay clubs, on the hustings or the stage. With characteristic frankness, he recounts growing up in General Franco's Spain, acting alongside some of the most talented names of the day as a teenager, and caring for his brother and mother as she descended into addiction. He ran the family home from sixteen, became ordained at twenty-four and came out as gay shortly after. And that's just the early years.