John Mortimer
It's been a good year for Dickens. The social observation still seems as acute, his gallery of hypocrites, frauds and self- important jacks-in-office are still around us, and 'The Sparkler', or The Inimitable', as he liked to call himself, has become the subject of two of the year's best books. Perhaps the more enjoyable was Claire Tomalin's The Invisible Woman (Viking, £16.99) in which the carefully hidden story of Dickens's love for the young actress Ellen Ternan is disinterred in a fascinating work of literary detection. It is told with sympathy, humanity and understanding. Peter Ackroyd's long, discursive study, Dickens (Sinclair-Stevenson, £19.95) is full of diversions and lit by flashes of brilliance, like the work of its subject.
Finally, Ruth Rendell has produced another cool but sympathetic study of a con man's overpowering obsession with the girl he believes loves him. Future genera- tions, wanting to know what London looked like, how we dressed and spoke at the end of the awful Eighties, will need to look no further than her Going Wrong (Hutchinson, £12.99).
Once again I have succeeded in avoiding all overrated books, and hope to end my days without having experienced many of the works of Tolkien, or very much of Umberto Eco,
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