26 NOVEMBER 1994, Page 45

Gabriele Annan

The three books I liked best have all been about time passing. Eric Hobsbawm's Age of Extremes (Michael Joseph, £20) is the fourth and last of his magisterial Ages, which begin with the Age of Revolution in 1789. Right-wing historians like Norman Stone and Nial Ferguson have admitted admiration for this Marxist colleague. What makes him gripping and moving for the general reader is that he writes as a man of feeling. The feeling is elegiac, as it is in Alan Hollinghurst's marvellously accomplished novel, The Folding Star (Chatto, £15.99). I loved that and also Cees Nooteboom The Following Story (Harvill, £6.99), a short, melancholy, metaphysical jeu d'esprit of a novel, with lots of wry jokes.