Raymond Carr
I hate visiting London and immersing myself in a society that reads and thinks about restaurants. Too much like the less attractive periods of the Roman empire. Stephen Inwood's readable, scholarly History of London (Macmillan, £30) revived my flagging spirits. Just a glimpse of David Remnick's King of the World (Random House, $25) made me want to read it. It is a biography of Mohammed Ali, one of the universal figures of the epoch. Most books on hunting are tedious. Roger Scruton's On Hunting (Yellow Jersey Press, £10) is not. A bravura performance. This year for the first time I bought the (107th) edition of Pear's Cyclopaedia (Penguin, £16.99). I was astonished at what it included. The section on ideas and beliefs is a master- piece of compression. Elsewhere you can learn that an area of the Arctic ice- cap the size of Norway has melted away or be informed about the present state of Dick- ens studies.
Previous page
