Anthony Starr
The best books I have read this year are Beyond the Pale by Nicholas Mosley (Secker & Warburg) Franz Liszt (Volume I) by Alan Walker (Faber) and Montaigne and Melancholy by M.......
Christopher Hawtree
Major Patrick Rance's The Great British Cheese Book (Papermac) is one of the most eloquent accounts of a food rapidly falling victim to the supermarkets' refrigerators and......
John Stewart Collis
I would choose Bernard Shaw and Lord Alfred Douglas: A Correspondence (Mur- ray) as the best recent book. There is such a parade of character in it — the always riveting Frank......
Michael Wharton
The best new books I have read this year are Europe Transformed by Norman Stone (Fontana) and Three Six Seven by Peter Vansittart (Peter Owen), The only really bad new book I......
John Mcewen
The best books have been Raoul Dufy the catalogue to the Hayward Exhibition, introduced by Bryan Robertson (Arts Council), The Bible and its Painters by Bruce Bernard (Orbis),......
Francis King The Best Books Have Been Russell Hoban's
Pilgermann (Cape) and Peter Heyworth's Otto Klemperer Volume 1 (Cambridge). The worst, Shirley Conran's The Magic Garden (Macdonald) and Bernard Levin's Enthusiasms (Cape).......
Lewis Jones
The most interesting novel I have read this year is Gillian Avery's Onlookers (Collins). The Masque of St Eadmundsburg by Hum- phrey R. Morrison (Blond & Briggs) is easily the......
Eric Christiansen I Don't Know About The Worst Or The
best new book because 1 haven't read enough to make a fair choice, but The New Testament in Scots, translated by W. L. Lorimer (Can- nongate) was either the one or the other.......
Auberon Waugh
The biography award goes to Margaret Fitzherbert's The Man Who Was Green- mantle: A Biography of Aubrey Herbert (Murray). In fiction mention must be made of The Other Side of......
Andrew Osmond
The best book I have read in 1983 was Far Away and Long Ago by W. H. Hudson, reprinted by Eland Books. This one goes in my Desert Island luggage. The worst was Ararat, by D. M.......
John Mortimer
I greatly enjoyed Required Writing by Philip Larkin (Faber) and Piper's Places by John Piper and Richard Ingrams (Chatto). 1 thought Margaret Duggan in Runcie (Hodder and......
Isabel Colegate
The best was Sergei Aksakov's trilogy, A Russian Gentleman, Years of Childhood and A Russian Schoolboy, recently reprinted in OUP World Classics paper- backs. The worst have all......
Hugh Montgomery-massingberd
The best were Anthony Powell's 0, How the Wheel Becomes It! (Heinemann) and Caves of Ice by James Lees Milne (Chatto). The worst was Viviane Ventura's Guide to Social Climbing......
Bel Mooney
The best books were Bartleby in Manhattan and Other Essays by Elizabeth Hardwick (Weidenfeld), Enthusiasms by Bernard Levin (Cape) and The Oxford Book of Death by D. J. Enright.......
Patrick Skene Calling
The best were Fools of Fortune by William Trevor (The Bodley Head) and Jelly Roll, Jabbo and Fats by Whitney Balliett (OUP). The worst, Caves of Ice by James Lees Milne (Chatto)......
Alastair Forbes
For the best novels, I pick Alice Thomas Ellis's The Other Side of the Fire (Duckworth), and My Antonia by Willa Cather, reprinted by Virago. There is really far too much......
Mark Amory
Fools of Fortune by William Trevor (The Bodley Head) is his best novel yet. Kate's House by Harriet Waugh (Weidenfeld and Nicolson) is hers. I may have read more inept books but......
Caroline Moorehead
The best books were The Name of the Rose by Umberto Eco (Seeker) and Anita Brookner's Look at Me (Cape). Difficult Women by David Plante was very able but vicious.......
Patrick Devlin
The best book is certainly The Name of the Rose by Umberto Eco (Seeker & Warburg). I started one or two which seemed to me to be very promising candidates for the worst, but......
Richard Ingrams
The best were Conversations with Graham Greene by Marie-Franciose Attain (Bodley Head), The Helen Smith Story by Paul Foot (Fontana) and Still Life by Richard Cobb (Chatto). The......
A. L. Rowse
The best and the most enjoyable books I have read this year have been King George V by Kenneth Rose (Weidenfeld & Nicolson), Owen Chadwick's Hensley Hen- son (OUP) and William......
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