Anthony Howard
QUITE unpredictably, the book I enjoyed most this year was Artemis Cooper's Cairo in the War 1939-1945 (Hamish Hamilton, £16.95). A splendid evocation of a city caught at an extraordinary moment in time, it is a stunning achievement for an author who, I guess, must be barely 30. Duff Cooper's grand-daughter captures perfectly the decadence of Britain's twi- light pro-consular period — and anyone who enjoyed Olivia Manning's Fortunes of War on television should find it, as I did, the ideal companion volume.
More conventionally, as an old Listener hand, I also admired Peter Parker's Acker- ley (Constable, £16.95). The biography of one of the greatest of literary editors, who reigned over the Listener's book pages from 1934-1959, there is possibly too much emphasis on the seedy, personal side of J. R. Ackerley's life (by no means the Christmas present for Mrs Mary White- house). But, although hardly for the fasti- dious, it remains a formidable biographical debut by another remarkably youthful author.
Roy Jenkins rates, I suppose, by now as a senior literary citizen — but I found his European Diary, 1977-81 (Collins, £25) a constant source of pleasure and merri- ment. Far too many pretentious French words — making M. le President sound from time to time rather like Mr Pooter but it still sticks in my memory as much the best fun of all the political books I have read over the past 12 months.
`The new vicar will be frocked'
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