Richard Cobb
I like books that make me laugh and Jeremy Lewis's Playing for Time (Collins, £12.95) kept me laughing every night in my local for a week. I could laugh with him because I too have suffered as a lifetime victim of the active malevolence of objects. Only last month the Collected Speeches of Robespierre tripped me up, causing me to break my right wrist. I was much moved by Michael Ignatieff's The Russian Album (Chatto, £12.95), a brave and heartening account of readjustment following the hor- rors of revolution and the proof that family solidarity can outwit collective terrorism. A reassuring record of survival as well as an odd tribute to the resourcefulness, in times of trouble, of the British Nanny. I found Francis Wyndham's evocation of the war years in The Other Garden (Cape, £9.95) convincing, elegant, muted and sad. Thanks to an American friend I discovered for the first time, on my return from South Carolina, the short stories of John Cheev- er.
I can indeed think of a recent book that was much overrated and that I abandoned in disgust a quarter of the way through. It was vulgar and trendy and was called The Fatal Shore by Robert Hughes (Collins Harvill, £15), a sort of TV book lent to me by one of my South Carolina graduates.
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