19 NOVEMBER 1983, Page 42

Recent paperbacks

James Hughes-Onslow

Markets of London Alec Forshaw and Theo Bergstrom (Penguin £4.95) London Street Markets Kevin Perlmutter (Wildwood House £2.95) No city has such a variety of open-air bargains, but the art of finding them is dying. Supermarkets are making shoppers lazy. For- shaw and Bergstrom (80 markets) are more thorough, Perlmutter (with 150) more opi- nionated.

Fowler's Modern English Usage (OUP £3.95) Sir Ernest Gowers' 1965 second edition. The scrib- bler's friend contains wonderful examples of vogue words, love of the long word, meaningless words, officialese, sociologese, popularised technicalities and stock pathos.

Hawke, PM John Hurst (Angus & Robertson £2.50) This biography of Australia's new boss is mostly concerned with his trade union career but has been hastily updated to include dramatic events in February and March when he became Labour leader and then PM. Hawke is popular with the media because he likes talking to them but he is as manipulative as Harold Wilson. The War Atlas, Armed Conflict — Armed Peace Michael Kidron & Dan Smith (Pan £6.95) Forty colour maps and charts bristling with missiles, electronics and cold war statistics. This book is aimed at the Greenham Common Ladies and at Lady Olga Maitland's Women For Defence. Some People Harold Nicolson (OUP £2.50) First published in 1927, now re-issued with an in- troduction by his son Nigel: 'He pierced with gimlet-perception through the pretences of which we arc all sometimes guilty, our forlorn hope to be thought more congenial, more liberated, more cultured than we really are.' Them and Us: Britain, Ireland and the Northern Question James Downey (Ward River Press £4.95) A Dublin view of Ulster hostilities. The Irish quite like the British, he says, but not British politicians. Downey is a bit hard on O'Neil's 'bumbling squirearchy' who seem a

better lot than Paisley's 'hysterical fundamentalists'.

The Penguin Dictionary of Proverbs Rosalind Fergusson (Penguin £2.50) More than 6,000 suc- cinct statements offering advice, warning, prediction or analytical observation — but not idiomatic phrases or similies — arranged under 188 subject headings. Sec Moderation, part 3, the dangers of excess: too much

choke a dog.

From Bauhaus to Our House Tom (Abacus £1.95) Wolfe sinks his fangs into modern architects. A humorous and incisive at- tack on the barbarous perpetrators of concrete and glass that bedevil our lives. The First Cuckoo: Letters to The Times sr Pudding could 1900 (Unwin £2.95) Revised with another five years' letters and a foreword from Bernard Levin Kenneth Gregoryreefgfoorryts gives not o

printed, he reveals.

th

published. 'Hilarious' says Alistair

The Anagram Dictionary Michael Curl (Mac- millan £2.95) Crossword puzzlers should know that Margaret Thatcher is That Great Charmer,

getting letters

Great Charm Threat or Meg the Arch Tarta. aHsatridomWeriltssoan m—oonWstlatore'sr. 'it old liar. An