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Tim Bale with a copy of his new book

A politics lecturer's eagerly anticipated new book - an assessment of the post-Thatcher Conservative Party and its wilderness years - will be launched with a public lecture in London next week. 

Dr Tim Bale, a Senior Lecturer in Politics and a member of the Sussex European Institute (SEI), specialises in party politics in the UK and in Europe. 

His critically acclaimed book, The Conservative Party From Thatcher to Cameron, is based on interviews with some of the key players in Tory politics during the past two decades. 

Tim also read virtually everything that anyone had ever written about the party since 1990 in books, academic journals and newspapers and political magazines. 

He says: "I've tried to provide the first definitive account of the years between the departure of Mrs Thatcher and the coming to power of David Cameron at the same time as producing a book that someone from any party, in Britain and beyond, can learn something from, even if it's what not to do!" 

"I had a lot of fun researching and writing the book: I want people to have at least as much fun reading it." 

And if the reviews so far are anything to go by, he's certainly succeeded. "He tells the story well," says Andrew Sparrow on the Guardian website, "combining breezy prose with academic rigour and anecdotes from the key participants." 

John Rentoul on the Independent website describes Tim as "a rising star of political science" and says: "The book is a brilliant analysis of why the party found it so hard to accept that election defeats suggested that it was doing something wrong, rather than that the electorate had made a terrible mistake." 

"Bale has produced a fine piece of writing and research about the Conservatives," concludes Mark Hennessy on the Irish times website "In this election year, if you are going to read one book about the party that may shortly once again govern our nearest neighbour, read this one." 

To launch the book, Tim will give a lecture on 'The Conservative Party's long journey from opposition to the brink of office' at a special event at the London School of Economics on Wednesday (3 February). 

And then what's next? "Believe it or not, another book on the Conservatives, but this time taking the story back to 1945 and looking at how well political science explanations of how and why parties change help us understand the Tories since 1945."