J ANE G ARDAM My first favourite book this year is Nature’s
Engraver: A Life of Thomas Bewick by Jenny Uglow (Faber, £20), a definitive biography with dozens of tiny, marvellous illustrations of Bewick; woodcuts reproduced with astonishing accuracy and beauty. The packed text revels in his times and the print and production are as fine as Bewick deserves.
Also biography, Georgina Howell’s Daughter of the Desert: The Remarkable Life of Gertrude Bell (Macmillan, £20) is an absorbing account of the life of this terrifying, rather dowdy, eccentric genius who was one of the founders of Iraq. Leonard Woolf: A Life by Victoria Glendinning (Simon & Schuster, £25) is saved from being another slice of Bloomsbury pie by Glendinning’s scholarship and blessed lack of awe. Woolf the colonial administrator in Ceylon is a revelation — the opposite of the background husband who cherished Virginia. The best novel I read was The Emperor’s Children by Claire Messud (Pan/ Macmillan, £14.99). And the book that is said to be the ‘big’ book this Christmas is the handsome red and gold Baden Powell-cum-Harry Potter vim-andvigour, The Dangerous Book for Boys by Conn and Hal Iggulden (HarperCollins, £18.99). A massive amount of information charmingly conveyed in beautiful print.
Finally I must mention the belated, incomparable final memorial to the Shell Guides, North Yorkshire by Peter Burton (Charles Russell, £14.95). Betjeman, John Piper and Henry Thorold may well be gone but their spirits here are in good fettle. Inspired, educated, non-flowery prose, and the photographs are stupendous.
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