More Books of the Year
The most original book this year, is Autogeddon by Heathcote Williams (Cape, £12.99). Divided into two sections, and wonderfully illustrated, the first part is the title piece, the author's 81-page- hymn of hate towards the automobile, which ends with the lines:
And if you derive your sense of freedom from cars You are going to defend them To the death.
The second part is an anthology of hate, very informative and funny, but the sort of thing one studies with an increasingly frozen smile. From Orwell, 'We value speed more highly than we value human life why not say so?', to Adolf Hitler, 'I regard Henry Ford as my inspiration' (1931), to the commuter drivers of Basingstoke pushing aside cars full of injured people so that they can get to work on time (1990), the Width of reading makes it the best aerology — as well as the best hymn of
hate — of the year.
Yet again, Eland Books have filled a gaping hole in the national list by reprint- ing Scum of the Earth by Arthur Koestler, an account of what it was like to be living in France on the wrong side of the Ministry of the Interior in 1939 and 1940. The author's success in keeping out of the deportation trains, despite the best attempts of the French authorities to put him in one, teaches us much about France then and, more depressingly, now. Will This Do?, the first volume of the autobiography of .Auberon Waugh (Century, £15.99), is an important book. Many will be drawn to it for the passages on Evelyn Waugh, but I feel it will earn its place in history for the unforgettable picture it paints of F.H.R. Dix, headmaster of All Hallows preparatory school for boys in the Forties, Fifties and Sixties. One would have to be very squinty-eyed not to appreciate the beauty of the illustrations.
Patrick Marnham
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