Far more people enjoy opera nowadays than ever before, so
you do not have to be working on a new history of Glyndebourne like me to find The Joy of Opera by Nigel Douglas (Deutsch, £25) fascinatingly read- able. It is full of illuminating stories, many of them hilarious and all of them new to me, but it also gives a wonderful picture of the splendours and miseries of the singer's life.
Alan Maclean's short autobiography, No, I tell a Lie, it was the Tuesday (Kyle Cathie, £16.99), left one longing for more. It is full of extraordinary incidents, all gently played down in irresistible style.
Harriet Waugh's new novel, A Chaplet of Pearls (Bloomsbury, £14.99), contains some splendid lightning flashes, and the unforced originality of the style is most attractive.
The two books I most want to read are Allan Massie's Shadows of Empire (Sinclair-Stevenson, £16.99) and Paul Johnson's A History of the American People (Weidenfeld, £25).
It was surprising that A People's Tragedy by Oklando Figes won so many prizes and was even praised for 'immaculate research' when it contained so many garbled quota- tions and other distortions, e.g. on Stolypin's reforms. Nevertheless, as far as style goes it was well written. The book I most look forward to not reading is The Roy Strong Diaries.
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