Jeffrey Bernard
I thought most critics were unfair to Frederic Raphael's Byron (Thames & Hud- son) and to him too. I found it so much more readable than other biographies of the great man of letters and I enjoyed it im- mensely. Is readability a sin and does it preclude scholarship? No. Academics seem to feel obliged to be stuffy. Raphael brings out the innate humanity of Byron and the book sparkles. Also, at last, Leslie Mar- chand's twelfth and final volume of the col- lected letters and journals of Byron ap- peared. This set would be my 'desert island' book. We must give thanks for The 27th Kingdom by Alice Thomas Ellis (Duckworth). Who said women have no sense of humour? Finally, not published this year but read by me for the first time, Michael Foot's Debts of Honour. Terrific stuff. I never knew the old buzzard could write so very well.
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