Peter Levi
The best book all round and the most rereadable, the fireside friend, is James Lees-Milne's Ancient as the Hills, Diaries 1973-74, but William Dalrymple's travel book is the most remarkable bundle of sur- prises and a real literary excitement as well (From the Holy Mountain, HarperCollins, £18). In this house our special favourite book this year is Jeremy Lewis's Cyril Con- nolly (Cape, £25); it is the funniest and has the most spring in its step of any literary life I have read in ages. Galileo's Salad (Carcanet, £7.95) is the latest collection from John Heath-Stubbs. His poems approach English literature like an iceberg approaching the Titanic. They are wonder- ful and his position looms as one of Oxford's greatest poets of the mid- century.
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