30 NOVEMBER 1985, page 29

Alan Watkins

I most enjoyed two dissimilar books by similar historians, Gwyn A. Williams's When Was Wales? (Black Raven Press) and Richard Cobb's People and Places. Professor Williams is......

Spender The Man

Rupert Christiansen JOURNALS 1939-1983 by Stephen Spender Faber, £15 C ocoa, I should think', muttered Auden to Robert Craft, an hearing Stra- vinsky ask Stephen Spender what......

Francis King

The two best novels that I read this past year were Jane Gardam's Crusoe's Daugh- ter and Brian Moore's Black Robe. I feel no surprise that neither appeared on the Booker......

P.j. Kavanagh

Peter Reading's Ukulele Music (Seeker & Warburg) is unlike anything else. He takes, for the most part, horrible bits of experience (granny-bashings, and so on) and makes poems......