Isabel Colegate
Here are three good books which I don't seem to have seen reviewed. Childhood, edited by Penelope Hughes-Hallett (Col- lins, £16), is a varied and unsentimental selection of prose and verse, largely auto- biographical, about the years before 12; it is a most rewarding book to dip into at any time. The English Spirit, edited by Paul Handley and others (Darton, Longman & Todd in association with Little Gidding Books, £9.95) is another anthology, and a useful present for godparents to give at Confirmations, being an introduction to what I suppose you could loosely call the George Herbert stream in English religious writing, a stream which seems to be run- ning underground at the moment — at least as far as the Church of England is concerned — but which must still be there somewhere. The anthology could well have been twice as long; on the other hand, it is cheap enough to allow for a more worldly present for your god-child as well, should you feel one is called for. The Sahibs and the Lotus by Michael Edwardes (Const- able, £14.95) is a good book to read if you are interested in British India but find nostalgia for the good old days of the Raj as tiresome as indiscriminate guilt-induced Empire-bashing. It is a balanced and enter- taining account of what life was really like for the British in India during the two centuries or so in which they were in the ascendant.
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