25 NOVEMBER 2000, Page 49

Brian Masters

The most enjoyable book of the year came at the end. Bryan Magee's Wagner and Phi- losophy (Allen Lane/ Penguin Press, £20) takes one through the most difficult con- cepts with ease and panache. Nobody can touch him for making the abstruse an absolute pleasure as well as pasture for the mind — never pompous, never self- congratulatory, never overwhelmingly intel- lectual. Above all, the author's enthusiasm for his subject is infectious and seductive. On the other hand the second volume of Woodrow Wyatt's Journals (Macmillan, £25) is vain, shallow and forgettable.