Recent paperbacks

James Hughes-Onslow

James Joyce: A Portrait of the Artist Stan Gebler Davies (Granada £1 .95). Much of Joyce's work was written in a code which he himself forgot — so interpretations are infinite. Here is his first Irish biographer.

McEnroe: The Man with the Rage to Win Tania Cross (Arrow £1.50). 'A real sweet guy.' Thoughtful, easy-going, modest, shy, intelligent, generous to opponents, unaffected by fame, sen- sitive to responsibilities, kind, never flashy and always misunderstood. A book for Wimbledon umpires.

The Book of Lech Walesa Introduced by Neal Ascherson (Penguin f2.50). Eleven essays by Polish friends and critics. Demagogue and negotiator, trouble-maker and compromise fix- er, messianic leader and comic man of the peo- ple, Walesa had a masterful but precarious hold on Solidarity.

A Dictionary of Literary Terms J A Cuddon (Penguin £4.95) From Abecedarius to Zeugma via Angry Young Man (a cliche), logorrhoea (vulgarly known as verbal diarrhoea), love poetry (see erotic poetry), je ne sais quoi (It's got something) and 22 pages defining a novel.

The Historic Houses Handbook Edited by Neil Burton (Macmillan £5.95) Now enlarged (but on- ly by 30 pages) to include Wales but not yet Scotland. More than 500 houses regularly open and a further 300 by appointment, many of them with home-made cakes and souvenirs, boat trips and safari parks.

The Lion and the Unicorn: Socialism and the English Genius George Orwell (Penguin £1.25) 'Sums up the thinking of the Tribune "Old Left" as eloquently and persuasively as Michael Foot's life of Aneurin Bevan' says Bernard Crick's in- troduction. A more serious political work than 1984 or Animal Farm. The Way We Live Now Anthony Trollope (OUP £3.95). Trollope's longest novel contains the usual ingredients of Victorian politics, high society and money but with an extra dose of in- dignation about the frightful things some chaps get up to.

The Last Ditch Roy Bradford (Blackstaff Press £3.95) A roman-a-clef (Bradford was in the Ulster Cabinet) about the last days of the Stor- mont Government.

Doctor in the Nest, Richard Gordon (Penguin £1.95) Sir Lancelot Spratt is at it again and ap- parently quite at home in the world of electronic medicine and industrial action in the NHS.

Masquerade Kit Williams (Cape £1.50) The rid- dle of the treasure hunt — and the answer. Kit Williams (1 will mask it) explains how he came to write and illustrate the book, make the golden hare and bury it in Ampthill Park. And how it was found, with the help of a dog.

Lateral Thinking for Management Edward de Bono (Pelican £2.50) More creativity and less logic can produce better results quicker. Even if the Professor's theories don't work they should certainly confuse your competitors.

The Playboy Interviews with John Lennon and Yoko Ono David Sheff (New English Library £2.50) Shortened conversations, published in 1980 to promote their last record, coincided with Lennon's death. Here are the wide-ranging thoughts of the ex-Beatle and his wife in more detail.

The Strings are False Louis MacNeice (Faber £3.25) The poet gave these autobiographical notes to an Oxford don during the war and they weren't found until after he died in 1963. Child- hood in Ireland, school in England (with a pre- Raphaelite beauty called Anthony Blunt) and

travels everywhere. ,

The Portable Conservative Reader Edited by Russell Kirk (Penguin £3.40) 'To aim for utopia is to end in disaster, the conservative says: we are not made for perfect things. All that we can reasonably expect is a tolerably ordered, just, and free society . . .' Burke, Disraeli, Conrad, Kipling, Bagehot, Eliot and other non-idealists.

Jungle Lovers Paul Theroux (Penguin £1.75) An early Theroux novel now in paperback for the first time. An insurance salesman is imprisoned by a revolutionary in Central Africa and gradual- ly both realise the inadequacy of their ideals.

The Falklands Conflict Christopher Dobson, John Miller and Ronald Payne (Coronet £1.50) Described as the full story but written before Port Stanley was recaptured, this speedy task force concentrates on the political and diplomatic origins of the dispute rather than the conflict itself.

Self-Portrait with Friends: The Selected Diaries of Cecil Beaton edited by Richard Buckle (Penguin £4.95) Beaton hoarded his experiences as much in writing as in photography and met an astonishing variety of people. Jackie Kennedy had `huge baseball-player's shoulders', he says.

Living off Nature Judy Urquhart (Penguin £5.95) How to eat crows and never have a bath. The author spent several months on Exmoor with her husband, a goat, four hens, a bag of oats, a knife, an axe, a cooking pot, some mat- ches and snares.