Rupert Christiansen
Nothing, nothing can match for me the charm and fascination of One Art (Chatto & Windus, £25), a selection of letters by the American poet, Elizabeth Bishop, as rich a record of a literary life as anything left by Keats, Flaubert or Virginia Woolf. Witty, brave, generous and exhilarating, Bishop was grateful for life even when it turned against her. A wonderful writer, a wonderful woman, a wonderful book. I also enjoyed Theodore Zeldin's An Intimate History of Humanity (Sinclair-Stevenson, £18.99) and Candia McWilliam's novel, Debatable Land (Bloomsbury, £14.99), both in their different ways works of haunting originality. Two biographies proved first- rate. Jonathan Keates' Stendhal and Selina Hastings' Evelyn Waugh (both Sinclair- Stevenson, £20). Finally, The Body (Thames & Hudson, £16.95), an astonish- ing collection of photographs charting the gamut of the human form, from gorgeous to grisly, with a suggestive commentary by William A. Ewing.
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