Peter Levi
Richard Mabey's nightingale book (Whistling in the Dark, Sinclair-Stevenson, £9.99) is enchantingly fresh and strange; it is a triumph of curious information and of intelligent, crisp writing. It is also small enough and cheap enough for a little pre- sent, and well produced. For pure enjoy- ment I would rate it very high indeed. Mary and Debbie Smith in Perfect Picnics (Pavil- ion Books, £9.99) offer a book almost as small and good-looking with pleasing illus- trations, but outstanding for its originality and practicality. The meals, like all the best picnics, are much more mouth-watering than you expect out of doors. As I spent most of the year reading and rereading Victorian journals and old letters, these two exceptions represent by contrast brief periods of intense pleasure, but they also enshrine a wish to eat and drink a perfect picnic while listening to the nightingale next May. And no recent book of poems will suit the early summer better than the fine individuality of F. T. Prince's Collected Poems (Carcanet, £25). They are so well written, so considered, and so deeply enchanting.
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