Richard Ingrams
Boswell the Great Biographer edited by M.K. Danziger and Frank Brady (Heine- mann, £25) brought to an end (at long last) the series of 13 volumes of Boswell's complete diaries. The period covered (1789-95) includes the publication of his great masterpiece, the Life of Johnson, and part of its great fascination lies in the way his triumph as a biographer appears to make no difference to his slow decline, helped on by heavy drinking, which he chronicles with his usual ruthless objectiv- ity. 'There is something noble in publishing truth, though it condemns one's self (Johnson).
In the fiction department I enjoyed Lies of Silence by Brian Moore (Bloomsbury, £13.99) and An Awfully Big Adventure by Beryl Bainbridge (Duckworth, £10.95), published too late to get a recommenda- tion last year. Both are proper stories about real people, written without resort to cliché. I would award my prize, however, to William Trevor (Bodley Head, £11.95) for his latest collection of stories, Family Sins.
Moscow! Moscow! by Christopher Hope (Heinemann, £14.95)) gives a witty and extremely perceptive picture of the crazy world of the Russian capital in the mad days of glasnost. Hope was drawn there because he felt at home in a place that reminded him so strongly of his native South Africa. I like especially the religious dimension in Hope's writing — though this goes for all the above, Boswell included.
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