WHEN a family is forced to share a bathroom with a cat burglar, a man who stabbed a policeman and a nubile girl who flaunts her underwear, life will be anything but dull.

And when the same family boasts illegitimate children, illiterate grandparents, dancing mistresses and a trapeze artist father, the future promises to be rather interesting.

A boy called John became the latest addition to the Major family in 1943 - and he almost died at birth.

Then a German bomb blew up the street showering the baby's pram with glass, the family gnome business went bust, and the Majors were so broke they couldn't afford buttons for John's blazer when school beckoned.

Yet young John was happy enough playing Subbuteo, watching cricket and doing as little as possible at school. He left with three O-levels - a fact which haunts him to this day.

A spell on the dole and a car crash (in which he almost lost his leg) followed before he drifted into local politics.

Exactly how he scrambled up the greasiest pole of them all via the posts of Foreign Secretary and Chancellor is revealed in the next 200 pages. And, by the time he is ensconced as PM behind the most famous black door in the world, you're left stunned by the sheer magnitude of his triumph.

What follows is the literary equivalent of walking through a minefield as the reader follows his relationship with Margaret Thatcher from a safe distance while awaiting the inevitable explosion. When the bomb eventually detonates, it's rather messy: Thatcher is variously described as an aberration, intolerable, ill-mannered, and even "un-Conservative."

Yet other unwelcome forces were also closing in. Major presents riveting accounts of the Black Wednesday ERM calamity in 1992, the descent into sleaze, and the destructive divisions over Europe which ultimately banished him into the political wilderness. And it all vividly unfolds against a backdrop of policy successes and disasters, the Gulf and Balkan crises, and his love for Norma to whom he dedicates the volume.

However, it's Major's retrospective analysis of his Premiership which provides a highlight of this self-deprecating account.

He readily admits he was "too safe, too conventional, too defensive, too reactive."

This, of course, fits perfectly with his image of respectability, of integrity, of decency. His trump card has always been a colourful background which has enabled him to escape perceptions of arrogance.

But when you compare Major's written confessional with his recent verbal outbursts a rather uncomfortable irony emerges.

In power, he appeared cautious, tentative and unsure at times of crisis and ended up leading the government to its worst electoral defeat. Yet in opposition, and with a book launch to consider, Major now appears happy to confidently direct from afar. He has also developed an extraordinary enthusiasm for extreme language and slanging matches.

On one level, Major now risks being accused of doing to William Hague what he maintains Thatcher did to him.

On another, there is a more profound conundrum to entertain: If these combative personality traits had surfaced during his tenure at No.10, would his legacy have been different

John Major: The Autobiography (Harper Collins, £25)

Converted for the new archive on 25 January 2001. Some images and formatting may have been lost in the conversion.