1 JANUARY 1983, Page 24

Books of the year

We continue our contributors' choice of the books they have most enjoyed in 1982.

Harold Acton

A History of World Art by Hugh Honour and John Fleming (Macmillan) is unques- tionably the book I have most enjoyed this year. True to its title, it is a formidable achievement, covering all the known arts and artefacts from the ice to the nuclear age. Written with suave lucidity and scholarship free from jargon, it widens the reader's horizon. Moreover it is copiously illustrated. The House: A Portrait of Chatsworth by the Duchess of Devonshire (Macmillan), far more than an entertaining and instructive guidebook to one of the noblest houses in England, is also immense- ly enjoyable. Here Baroque and Neo- Classical meet harmoniously in a Virgilian landscape. Hilarious anecdotes a la Mitford enliven the genial text. If you enjoy sipping Viennese coffee to the strains of Strauss, I can recommend The Emperor and the Act- ress by Joan Haslip (Weidenfeld & Nicolson). Though allergic to the Emperor Franz Josef since the First World War, I was won over by Miss Haslip's sympathetic account of his liaison with Frau Schratt, some 20 years his junior. Miss Haslip has humanised the Habsburg martinet.