Tabloid Nation by Chris Horrie (Andre Deutsch, £17.99)

Hannen Swaffer told his biographer in 1928: "Freedom of the Press in Britain is the freedom to print such of the proprietor's prejudices as the advertisers don't object to."

Swaffer. I am old enough to remember a time when most journalists in newspaper offices up and down the land knew - and revered - his name.

A semi-mythical figure, with his haggard, drawn face, he was the Keith Richards of journalism, wielding not a guitar, rather a pen loaded with hydrochloric acid.

In an age when the Establishment tolerated literary reprobates far less than they do now, this terrible, violent drunk, who would later campaign for teetotalism, was an enigma in every way.

The composer of racist music hall songs, he nevertheless backed the left-wing of the Labour Party throughout his life. Above all, he perfectly fitted the public's cliched perception of the hard-drinking, professional hack.

It was Swaffer who transformed the earlier incarnation of the Daily Mirror as gentlewoman's journal to Britain's first "picture paper".

This year, the Mirror celebrated its 100th birthday - and within the pages of this sterling book, Chris Horrie unravels the fascinating and sometimes absurd history of the paper that was literally a legend in its own Lunchtime O' Booze.

Today's older generation of newspapermen and women generally possess a treasure chest of anecdotes from their lives in print. And as you might expect, this narrative overflows with ludicrous stories.

Take Bart Bartholm-

ew, the Mirror's editorial director from 1931-51, arguably the inventor of the modern British tabloid. According to Horrie, he was a coarse, violent, foul-mouthed, illiterate drunkard.

Apparently, his party piece was to sneak up on the editor while he was poring over page proofs with the chief sub-editor, and break a plank over the former's head. Yet the hapless man would always live to tell the tale - the offensive weapon was made from balsa wood and caused no damage.

But this trawl through the long-dry ink on yellowing pages is much more than just a collection of tall tales.

For Horrie not only dwells at length with the Mirror's heyday in the 60s, but also speculates that the age of the tabloid may be drawing to a close, thanks to the internet, dumbed-down TV and celebrity magazines.

John Phillpott