Peter Levi
I have mostly been re-reading old favourites like Homer and Catullus, and, for work, flopping about lethargically in memoirs of Tennyson's friends. But I enormously enjoyed Craig Raine's Haydn and the Valve Trumpet (Faber, £20). It is a collection of essays written with wisdom and humour and pleasure; they seem made of power and light and make one beam. They will certainly be read by the discern- ing for 100 years.
I suspect, from quotations, that Isaiah Berlin's new book is even better, but I have not yet read it. I do not know who is over-praised, except that in the 1950s we thought the older generation of writers was better than ours, and so far as it survives, it still is. I did not imagine in 1955 that I would be running to the shops in 1990 to buy the newest Kingsley Amis, Iris Mur- doch and Isaiah Berlin, but I am doing so. Craig Raine is a brilliant exception.
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