The first instalment arrived in the post last week and it deals - surprise, surprise - with the London 2012 Olympics and Paralympics.

Now, Caborn served as a Member of Parliament for the Yorkshire city of Sheffield - which has had a huge influence on the way organised sport has developed in Britain over the past couple of centuries - for 27 years.

So he has more strings to his bow than being a notably long-serving Sports Minister.

I got to know him around 30 years ago, well before Tony Blair’s Premiership, while he was chairing the Trade and Industry Select Committee at Westminster.

We spent hours discussing the future of Britain’s remaining coal mines and the country’s energy policy.

It is hard to imagine anything more topical at present; I would have been interested to read his considered views on those days and whether they hold any clues as to how Europe might plot a path out of the present crisis.

Having said that, the London 2012 years were when Caborn was in power and most unremittingly in the public spotlight: it is not surprising that this is where he should choose to start.

Publication of the new book - London 2012: From Concept to Legacy - coincides moreover with a gala dinner at the Sheffield Olympic Legacy Park this coming Friday (September 9).

Caborn was a good Sports Minister, but this had nothing to do with specialist knowledge.

As I wrote in the New Statesman, in a piece coinciding with his 68^th month in the post, a record for a single stint in the role: "With a trade-union background at a Sheffield steel works, he has a talent for identifying when to compromise and when to tough things out."

This marathon stretch had started immediately after Labour's General Election victory in June 2001.

I remember arriving late for a Meet and Greet over a few drinks with other sports journalists in the new Minister's office a few days later.

It is interesting to reflect how it was only about a month afterwards that I found myself sitting in a coffee bar in Moscow’s Mezhdunarodnaya hotel as Michael Payne, the International Olympic Committee (IOC)’s then marketing director, issued a strongly-worded wake-up call to anyone aspiring to bring the 2012 Games to London.

"Britain has been warned by a senior IOC official that it might as well forget about bidding for the 2012 Olympic Games if it cannot raise its game," I wrote in the FT.

Whether or not it was as a consequence of this message, raise its game the UK certainly did.

So much has been written about London 2012 that I began Caborn’s book wondering if there could possibly be anything left to reveal.

Much of the story is indeed familiar to this particular wizened Olympic hack.

But there are new details to savour.

I was intrigued that Caborn evidently thinks the idea of handing him the sports portfolio might have originated in the lift he gave key Blair adviser Alastair Campbell to a football match involving Caborn’s team Sheffield United and Campbell’s beloved Burnley.

I chuckled at Deputy Prime Minister John Prescott’s reaction to Sebastian Coe’s eventual appointment to head up the bid: "But he’s a Tory! We can’t have a Tory running the show."

There is also a full account of Caborn’s fruitful visit to South Africa to woo Nelson Mandela’s support.

Most of all for my sins, I enjoyed a fresh example of how Caborn was one of those Ministers of the Crown who would not shrink from deploying the odd expletive when he felt this was warranted or might provoke the desired reaction from an interlocutor.

I have been the butt of this myself, in 2005.

Coming up for air after filing my first-edition story on London 2012's great victory over Paris, New York and the others, I suddenly noticed my name was being shouted across the atrium of the swish Singapore hotel where events had unfolded.

"Fucking Owen. Fucking wrong again."

This was Caborn reminding me in his inimitably subtle style that, as I had repeatedly told him, I had thought Paris had the edge, at least until London’s mould-breaking final presentation.

A text message from former British Olympic Association chief executive Simon Clegg, reproduced in Caborn’s book, offers another example from earlier in the bid.

Clegg, a former Army man, is said to have sent Caborn the following text: "I still chuckle about the heated conversation we had when I pulled my car into a lay-by on the A3 on my way into the office to ring you, after hearing on the Today programme that the bid had dropped off the Cabinet agenda (again) because of the potential Gulf War.

"Classic Dick Caborn, stopping to draw breath after 60 seconds. 

"Hey Cleggie, you look after the fucking sport and I’ll look after the fucking politics, all right?"

"It’s fair to say you were good to your word."

I think I got off lightly.