Andro Linklater
The most enchanting book I read this year was the re-issue of Cecil Lewis's Sagittarius Rising (Greenhill Books, £15.95), a poetic memoir of his first world war experiences with the Royal Flying Corps and the fledgling RAF. No other writer — not even Saint-Exupery — has better conveyed the sheer sensuality of discovering the new ele- ment of the air, and Lewis, now aged 95, deserves to be better known as one of the most remarkable members of that lost gen- eration.
The late Philip Lloyd-Bostock's The Centre of The Labyrinth (Quartet, £16.95), came at the other end of the enjoyment scale. A thinly disguised account of his sado-masochistic odyssey through the sweat-bars of San Francisco, it was almost unreadable, but has stayed with me for its bleak demonstration that life without loving is nothing. The most exciting novel was — two years late I'm afraid — Susan Sontag's The Volcano Lover (Vintage, £5.99).
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