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The Englishman is , now Lord Owen, former Foreign Secretary and co-founder of the Social Democrats. The Scotsman is James Kelman, widely regarded as one of today's most influential writers. The Irishman is Bernard O'Donoghue, an Oxford don from north Cork originally and an accomplished poet in his own right. I spent most of yesterday morning interviewing all three -- separately, I hasten to add -- about their new books.

David Owen, who worked as a medical doctor before entering politics as a Labour MP in 1966, has published a new book examining the physical and mental health of heads of government over the past century. It's a fascinating study, which reveals frightening details particularly of the mental health issues facing some of the century's political leaders. James Kelman's new novel -- Keiron Smith, boy -- is a literary exploration of language and culture through the mind, and voice, of a working class teenager growing up in post-war Glasgow. It is a masterful and compellingly original work of art. And Bernard O'Donoghue's newly minted Selected Poems will, I think, go a long way to bringing him the reputation he rightly deserves as one of our finest lyrical poets.

You can hear all three interviews in the upcoming series of The Book Programme. I won't give too much away here, but Lord Owen outlined his controversial "Hubris Syndrome" theory in the interview. He contends that some politicians (though the condition is not limited to politicians) have developed, in various degrees, a collection of symptoms suggestive of a heightening of self to the exclusion of others and their perspectives. He thinks Lloyd George suffered from hubris syndrome, as did Margaret Thatcher and Tony Blair, in the latter periods of their tenure. George Bush is another candidate -- though we could probably have spent the entire interview talking about President Bush's issues. I wondered if hubris syndrome is not present in the lives of all politicians -- it may even be the drive behind a particular politician's decision to enter politics. Dr Owen wouldn't rule that out but maintains that the condition is only a serious problem in extreme cases when it impacts negatively upon an individual's performance. The second Iraq War is a case in point: two heads of government, Tony Blair and George Bush, united by a common mental health challenge: pathological hubris.

Hubris syndrome has not, as yet, been recognised by the medical or psychiatric establishments. It would explain a lot though, wouldn't it?