D AVID G ILMOUR The most stimulating thing I have read this
year is Richard Dawkins’ brilliant new book, The God Delusion (Bantam Press, £20). One can hardly read a page without feeling that, if only monotheistic fundamentalists everywhere (in America as well as Asia) could absorb even a tenth of it, the world would be a safer and more peaceful place.
Max Egremont’s Siegfried Sassoon (Picador, £25) is a wonderful biography of a fine poet and complicated man, a triumph of deep research, stylish writing and empathic talent. The Classical World (Penguin, £9.99) by Robin Lane Fox is a great classical historian’s magisterial view of the epic centuries from Homer to Hadrian. And Vyvyen Brendon’s Children of the Raj (Weidenfeld, £20) is a scholarly, sympathetic and entertaining survey of the many trials and sporadic joys of British children in India and in exile at Home.
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