15 NOVEMBER 2008, Page 38

Anita Brookner

As I spent a large part of the year writing, my actual reading was rather restricted, and limited to fact rather than fiction. I very much enjoyed Ferdinand Mount’s Cold Cream (Bloomsbury, £20) and the endlessly fascinating Diaries of James Lees-Milne (John Murray). I also liked The Other Garden and Collected Stories by Francis Wyndham (Picador, £7.99), tenderly and faithfully written. Everything else has been mildly disappointing. Now I am reduced to nostalgia reading: Simenon, Kundera, Alice Munro.