More books of the year
A selection of the best and worst books of the year chosen by some of the Spectator's regular reviewers.
Christopher Booker
1984 has been a memorable year for biographies, with Peter Ackroyd's T. S. Eliot, Meryle Secrest's Kenneth Clark and A.N. Wilson's Hilaire Belloc all powerfully conveying the undertones of tragedy in their subjects' lives. Simply as a gripping story, effectively told, perhaps Wilson's Belloc has the edge.
It is rather invidious to single out the 'worst books of the year', particularly when so many books published are not really books at all. But I have to confess disappointment in C.V. Wedgwood's The Spoils of Time: A Short History of the World. While in terms of unwrapping a promising parcel to find that it contains nothing at all, Don Cuppitt's utterly de- pressing and intellectually confused Sea of Faith must win hands down.
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