Hilary Mantel
I would like to recommend a novel by a young man from Glasgow . . . no, don't make those retching noises and run out of the room, just calm down and listen for a second; this......
David Caute
For late-night laughter I have been sus- tained by Garrison Kelllor's The Book of Guys (Faber, £14.99). The general thesis is that any male foolish enough to venture into adult......
Peter Levi
James Lees-Milne has produced a diary (A Mingled Measure, John Murray, £19.99) so sparkling and readable, so surprising and so wise and often so funny it has cheered me all day......
Nigel Nicolson
I liked Nelson: A Personal History by Christopher Hibbert (Viking, £20) because it is a perfect example of how to humanise greatness, and happily Nelson had enough faults to......
P. J. Kavanagh
Shusaku Endo is the leading Japanese writ- er of his generation (b. 1923) and his The Girl I Left Behind (Peter Owen, £14.99) is a remarkably convincing study, without irony or......
Giles Auty
It is reassuring to learn how difficult or even impossible life seemed at times to another long-term critic for The Spectator: this paper's lively and controversial review- er......
Frederic Raphael
Roger Scruton's Modem Philosophy (Sinclair-Stevenson, £25) was the most use- ful book I read this year: it combines verve with reliability and reminds us that, with the decline......
Rupert Christiansen
Nothing, nothing can match for me the charm and fascination of One Art (Chatto & Windus, £25), a selection of letters by the American poet, Elizabeth Bishop, as rich a record of......
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