Hugh Cecil
Best books: The Arrow edition of Philip Caputo's A Rumor of War — the best account of Vietnam fighting to date and not to be lumped in the same category as third-rate works like Let a Soldier Die and The Glory Hole, also reprinted this year. It is unsen- timental and doesn't show a US army entirely populated by drug addicts and psychopaths. Well Deane!: the Letters of Edward Burra, edited by William Chappell (Gordon Fraser), a hilarious record of a highly original man, who succeeded in staying happy (a condition detested by reviewers) in spite of constant illness (in- tensified with tequila, shellfish etc.) and arthritis, which always threatened his fasci- nating (and actually uninterrupted) artistic career. Selina Hastings's Nancy Mitford, a cleverly constructed, concentrated por- trait, combining treatment at a light gos- sipy level suited to its subject's style with a deeply penetrating analysis of personality and milieu.
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