Martin Vander Weyer, arguably the finest financial journalist of his generation, has three priceless gifts.

He has the ability to describe the most complex economic conundrums in the simplest of prose; he has an exceptionally well-developed sense of humour; and he is a Yorkshireman, by nature, if not birth.

All three gifts are amply and effortlessly displayed in this splendid collection of Martin’s most memorable columns from the Spectator magazine and elsewhere.

As Fraser Nelson, Martin’s editor at the Spectator, writes in his Foreward: “Martin is incapable of writing a dull sentence. This book is, like Martin’s column, a collection of tales from Britain’s financial frontline with the fun bits left in. The world of business is mad, sometimes bad, and always thrillingly unpredictable – and there is no better guide than Martin.”

Just as the best politicians have had careers before they arrive at Westminster, so many (though not all) of the best journalists have had other careers before journalism.

Martin was a merchant banker, despite dreaming of writing for the Spectator when he was at Oxford University in the 1970s. He never enjoyed the world of banking from the inside and when he was summarily sacked in 1992, it was a relief, not a disaster. He immediately contacted Christopher Fildes, the doyen of City commentators, and within a few weeks had written his first Spectator column.

In another life-changing decision, he bought the elegant Knipes Hall in Helmsley in 1989 and – working from home – it is through a detached outsider’s perspective that he charts and commentates on the politics and shenanigans of the City of London.

Living in rural North Yorkshire has also enabled Martin to become a mainstay of the Helmsley Arts Centre, a Helmsley town councillor, a column for our sister paper, The Gazette & Herald, and a very enthusiastic, and not untalented, local actor. The bracing Helmsley air whistles through his columns, even when they are analysing the most complex and arcane of City deals.

I suspect the section entitled Yorkshire Life will be of most interest to Press readers, detailing, as it does, Martin’s entertaining experiences in his beloved county. There are many hilarious anecdotes, but spaces dictates that I can only mention one.

So here goes.

In 1996 Martin described Middlesbrough as the “North-East’s capital of motorised crime” in the Spectator, which prompted the Middlesbrough Evening Gazette to write the classic headline “Slur in Toffs’ magazine” which, in turn, promoted Martin to withdraw his application to be the Conservative candidate for Middlesbrough Central in the 1997 General Election.

On the evidence of this hugely enjoyable book, Middlesbrough’s loss was certainly our gain.