Anthony Blond

I much enjoyed Susan Hillmore's novella The Greenhouse (Collins/Harvill, £9.95) for its well-bedded flowery prose but I liked an equally properly written first novel, (which I......

Peter Levi

The most overestimated book this year has been The Oxford Shakespeare (£29.50), now completed with a third volume which I find grossly inadequate and worse every time I consult......

J. G. Links

My confidence in my literary judgment, usually rather frail, has had a boost this year. Five Christmases ago I introduced Spectator readers to Robertson Davies, then almost......

Jennifer Paterson

Very Irish my favourites this year. William Trevor's The Silence in the Garden (Bodley Head, £9.95) is a most wonderful novel, Which I have read twice trying to fathom some of......

Alastair Forbes

Mirabile dictu, I have particularly enjoyed several books by friends of mine, two of them on the inexhaustible subject of Tol- stoy. A. N. Wilson's splendid study (Ham- ish......

John Jolliffe

I strongly recommend A Stranger To Hell by Stefan Badeni (Tabb House, 7 Church Street, Padstow, Cornwall, £9.50), in Which a 59-year-old Pole's grisly experi- ences in......