CHRISTMAS BOOKS I
Books of the Year
A selection of the best and most overrated books of the year chosen by some of the Spectator's regular
reviewers.
John Keegan
I tremendously enjoyed Woodrow Wyatt's Confessions of an Optimist, perhaps be- cause the title and the contents exactly matched. The author confessed a great deal more about himself than most of us would care to have revealed, with the same good humour that has seen him through three changes of career and four mar- riages. The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat by Oliver Sacks is not quite in the same class as his famous Awakenings. But as a collection of extraordinary case-studies it never failed to fascinate, as much be- cause of the author's unfailing humanity towards his patients as of their strange afflictions. Richard Cobb's A Classical Education is the most arresting instalment so far of his invented art-form, the autobiography-as-something-else. What, after history, topography and now crimi- nology, can he choose next? Part of the fun of being one of his fans is waiting to see.
Previous page
