Alastair Forbes

Forbidden by the literary editor to name any but cis-Channel productions, and anxious to show that I follow what the Wrong little, tight little islanders deem the issue of the......

Jane Gardam

The best psychological thriller I've read for years is The Last Girl by Penelope Evans (Black Swan, £5.99) who is classicist, barris- ter, wife and mother, lives in Surrey and......

Simon Courtauld

Alistair Home's The Lonely Leader: Monty 1944-45 (Macmillan, £17.50) is full of intriguing insights into the character of the most remarkable of our second world war generals.......

Alan Clark

Why do human beings destroy themselves? Their predicament, which is the fundament of all true literature, rests on love, idealism, self-sacrifice, betrayal and, too late, a......

Anne Applebaum

The best books I've read this year share a theme but not a subject. One was the Embarrassment of Riches: An Interpretation of Dutch Culture in the Golden Age by Simon Schama......

Jennifer Paterson

My favourite weird and wonderful book of the year is The Bachelors by Henri de Mon- therlant, translated by Terence Kilmartin (Quartet Encounters, £4.95). Really crazy account......

James Buchan

I liked David Kynaston's The City of London: A World of its Own (Chatto, £25), for it brings literacy to a part of town aban- doned since the time of Keynes. James Grant's Money......