Allan Massie
The best new novel I read during the year was Kingsley Amis's Stanley and the Women, the Master in his best form for several books: funny, sharp, intelligent and oddly moving. I greatly enjoyed A.N, Wilson's biogra- phy of Belloc, a robust and affectionate portrait of a great man, though I thought he might have made higher claims for Belloc's writing. It could, of course, be slapdash; at its best, it was of an unequal- led lucidity and muscularity. Wilson's biography must yield place, however, to the most delightful and intensely interest- ing non-fiction of the year: David Kerr Cameron's The Cornkister Days (Gol- lancz). Sub-titled 'A Portrait of a Land and its Rituals', this was an evocation of the rural culture of the North-East Lowlands. of Scotland, full of knowledge and deep feeling. A wonderful book.
Two novels head my list of the year's duds: D. M. Thomas's Swallow and Paul Theroux's Doctor Slaughter. Both were tedious, both pretentious and both nasty.
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