Max Hastings
Best books: The Road to Berlin by John Erickson completes his monumental work on the Red Army in the Second World War, based overwhelmingly upon Russian sources. It is flawed as history by Professor Erickson's readiness to believe the best of the Russian Army, and to brush asides such small matters as Katyn. But it tells such a vast amount that the world has never known about the Eastern Front that all future historians will be in Erickson's debt. The Battle of the Bulge by Charles B. Macdonald (Weidenfeld) is a meticulous reconstruction by an American military historian, not notably well written, but unlikely to be surpassed for its research on the Ardennes campaign.
Worst books: The Sinking of the Belgra- no by Rice and Gavshon, which pursues many of the ludicrous hares started by poor Mr Dalyell and other great questers after irrelevance in the parliamentary Labour party. That's My Baby, a modern comic- strip life of Jesus Christ by John Metcalf, published by Collins, shows to what depths a once great publisher can sink.
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