20 NOVEMBER 1993, page 37

Anita Brookner

The most underrated novel of the year was Ruth Prawer Jhabvala's Poet and Dancer (John Murray, £14.99), a bleak and fright- ening story of one of those symbiotic friendships......

Richard Cobb

The book that I most enjoyed reading this year was Michael Bloch's biography of Ribbentrop (Bantam, £14.99). His subject, both as ambassador and as foreign minis- ter, raised......

Christmas Books I

Books of the Year The best and most overrated books of the year, chosen by some of The Spectator's regular contributors Julie Burchill With terrifying predictability, my......

Alice Thomas Ellis

The Rituals of Dinner by Margaret Visser (Viking, £17.99) has gone straight into my (so far rather pitiful) collection of books on domestic history. I share with Jeff Bernard a......

John Bowen

The Wine-Dark Sea by Patrick O'Brian (IliarperCollins, £14.99) is the 16th of his sequence of novels, set during the Napoleonic Wars, about James Aubrey RN and his friend and......