Alastair Forbes
The longest — and best value between hard covers — book that came my way in 1993 was without doubt Gore Vidal's collected book reviews (United States: Essays 1951-1992, Deutsch, £25), which includes a long, hitherto unpublished essay of appreciation of the works of Montaigne in editions containing as many words as it had taken a whole month of Vidal's life to read, absorb and appreciate. Having, by appreciative habit, already read every issue of the New York Review of Books with his name on the cover — all of his contribu- tions to which appear in this American- I'd like an intimate,, candle-lit table for nine.'
produced Christmas Bumper without a sin- gle misprint in its 1,300 or so pages — deem this volume the most intellectually stimulating and best possible value for present-giving and lasting pleasure. Nobody should be put off buying it by the silly show-off ten minutes Vidal was encouraged by the BBC to spend in a most historically unprofessional re-examination of a president of whom we were both pleased enough to be friends. The book i8 Hyperion to last Sunday's satyr.
Richard Lamb's War in Italy 1943-45 (John Murray, £19.99) is on a level with his other brilliant studies of all that preceded and came to pass in the second world war.
`Probably the most important Royal writ- er of the century' has written Andrew Wilson of poor Marion Crawford in his preface to Duckworth's timely reprint of Crawfie's treacly twaddle which earned her even more unchristian unforgiveness from the church-going Queen Mother than her brother-in-law David Windsor and his wife. I thought Andrew's judgment a bit severe on poor Queen 'Missy' of Romania and her excellently written three volumes of mem- oirs, but I suppose these have never been on his reading list. Still I very much hope this republication will help to restore the fortunes of the House of Duckworth, if not that of the House of Windsor. It may be too late for the latter. I had, of course, read this harmless little volume on its first appearance long, long ago, though I had forgotten that our beloved and estimable sovereign had once suffered almost the same delusion as the Roman emperor who made his horse a Consul, only she wanted it the other way round. I don't, alas, get as many new books coming my way as I should like, but I am grateful to Mr Naim Attallah's adventurous publishing house, Quartet, for giving me pleasure and instruction by sending me such worthwhile volumes as The Honour of the Tribe by Rachid Mimouni (£14.95), The Women of Sand and Myrrh by Hanan-al- Shaykh (£6.95) and My Golden Road to Samarkand by Jaseha Golowanjuk (£14.95), a Samarkand-born Swede, all of which I have read with interest and horizon- bending enjoyment.
To Lord Weidenfeld goes the distinction of publishing the worst book of 1993, Sir Peregrine Worsthorne's ill-written and ill- spelt account of the curious rise and fall of a naturalised Belgian in British journalism, a footnote to the greater Fleet Street fall of the House of Berry. (Tricks of Memory, £18.99). But from the Weidenfeld presses will in mitigation come the English transla- tion of Jose Luis de Vilallonga's fascinating study of the King of Spain, already pub- lished in Spanish and French and written with the close collaboration of its subject. It is by far the most interesting biography or autobiography that I have read in 1993, and one which will be admired and consult- ed long after the tedious memoirs of Mar- garet Thatcher are forgotten.
Previous page
