5 JANUARY 1985, Page 24

Frank Johnson

As most people should admit, I tend to read new book reviews rather than new books. I have resolved next year actually to read a selection of works from the Martin Amis-Julian Barnes-Craig Raine Conspira- cy that appears to control most of these annual choices. I must also try something from the rival A. N. Wilson Organisation. (Is it really true, as enemies argue, that the Belloc biography minimises its subject's anti-semitism? If so, had I read it, it would have been one of my choices here for worst.)

De Gaulle by Sam White was proof that journalists who understand events at the time practise a more demanding profession than historians. In Stanley and the Women, Kingsley Amis is wonderfully funny at pretending to hate women. I assume he is pretending. We await with interest the book's reception in America.

Two worst: The Story of Africa by Basil Davidson which argues, completely uncon- vincingly, that civilisation was flourishing down there if only the Europeans had not introduced barbarism. Deserves to become a classic at ILEA. The Kennedys by Peter Collier and David Horowitz. Yet another telling of the tale of corrupt, fornicating father etc, with no discussion of the neg- lected subject of how the son conducted the presidency in between his allegedly endless fornications. I am ashamed for reading every word of it.