CHRISTMAS BOOKS II
Books of the Year
A further selection of the best and most overrated books of the year, chosen by some of The Spectator's regular contributors
Denis Hills
In The Other Russia by Michael Glenny and Norman Stone (Faber, £14.99) some 60 contributors recall the flight and disper- sal of three generations of emigres from Russia. There was terror, courage, bathos and hysteria: and as the Romanovs were murdered, 'in every church, instead of the set prayer "Long live the Tsar!" the people prayed, paradoxically, "Long live the Pro- visional Government!" ' The excerpts, which have been annotated, are inspiring, and contain vignettes worthy of Chekhov. The Slopes of Lebanon by Amos Oz, a leading Israeli figure in the Peace Now Movement (Chatto, £13.95), is a passion- ate plea to his fellow Jews to replace the policy of confrontation and reprisal by one of negotiation. `By relying on force to survive,' writes Oz, 'we are building our body on the ashes of our soul.' Oz draws a damning picture of Begin, in the moment of victory, leaning on a cane at the top of the captured Crusader castle Beaufort, `happy, gleeful and arrogant'. But will Oz's homilies change the view of the hard men whose paranoid obsession is the survival of the present Jewish state at whatever the human cost?
The Stahlbergs had close connections with the Prussian aristocracy, and Alexan- der, the author of Bounden Duty: The Memoirs of a German Officer, 1942-45 (Brassey, £17.95) shared its strict code of honour and duty. He despised the Nazis. The Fiihrer was a failed corporal (`his breath smelled') whose monstrous fanta- sies led to Germany's ruin. Stahlberg served as aide-de-camp to Field Marshal von Manstein. He admired Manstein as an outstanding military strategist but admits that he was politically naive, unwilling to accept the reports of Jewish extermination camps (`unbelievable) and declining to take part in the plot to assassinate Hitler (Prussian Field Marshals do not mutiny'). The book is exciting and informative. It illuminates the conflict between the ethics of the army and those of the Nazi party, its leaders and units.
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