Book Review: White House, White Lies ; A Box of Silly Tricks Makes This Biography as Credible as a Clock That Strikes 13. by Godfrey Hodgson; Dutch: A Memoir of Ronald Reagan by Edmund Morris HarperCollins, Pounds 24.99, 874pp

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In 1980, Edmund Morris published the first volume of a biography of Theodore Roosevelt. It was an excellent book, and it led to a commission: to write the life of the incumbent president of the US, Ronald Reagan. As the years went by, rumours surfaced in Washington about the project: the length (more than 600 pages of text and another 200 of notes); the advance (more than $3m); the enviable access Morris had been given by the President, his wife Nancy, the White House staff and Reagan's friends.

What no one was prepared for, and indeed what the publisher kept secret, was the bizarre way in which Morris tackled his assignment. It is not just that he has used a whole …