21 NOVEMBER 1998, page 38

Philip Hensher

The fiction I liked best all year was Nicola Barker's Wide Open (Faber, £12.99), William Trevor's Death in Summer (Viking, f15.99), and Martin Amis's knockout col- lection of......

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 Anita Brookner My favourite novel of the year was Murray......

Alan Judd

Spellmount's new edition of the two vol- umes of Rudyard Kipling's The Irish Guards in the Great War (L24.95) is partly uncommonly evocative regimental history, partly a moving......

Digby Anderson

A leading contender for the worst thing to happen this century must be the wanton destruction of western church liturgies , notably the Tridentine Mass and the Book of Common......