Bevis Hillier

My first choice is A Mingled Measure (John Murray, £19.99), the latest volume of James Lees-Milne's diaries. I notice that he is forever declaring that he is not clever. It is......

William Scammell

Alistair Elliot's Turning the Stones (Car- canet, £6.95) demonstrated all the Augus- tan virtues — clarity, lucidity, proportion — in a nicely contemporary idiom that touches......

J. G. Links

I almost found myself admitting that the book I enjoyed most in 1994 was Alan Clark's Diaries (Phoenix, £6.99); this would have spoken well for my candour but hardly for my......

John Simpson

The best account of our calamitous century to have appeared this, or any, year is Eric Hobsbawm's Age of Extremes (Michael Joseph, £20) an unimaginative title for a marvellously......

Gabriele Annan

The three books I liked best have all been about time passing. Eric Hobsbawm's Age of Extremes (Michael Joseph, £20) is the fourth and last of his magisterial Ages, which begin......

Hugh Trevor-roper

Ought Jonathan Dimbleby's Prince of Wales (Little, Brown, £20) to have been published? Like some others, I thought not — until I had read it. Had all those commentators who......

Andro Linklater

The novel that gave me most pleasure in 1994 was Candia McWilliam's Debatable Land (Bloomsbury, £14.99), the story of a voyage through the Pacific. The precision of its language......