Anne Chisholm
Reading, as a Booker judge, 115 novels this year has not in the least spoiled my appetite for fiction, but I will discreetly confine my comments here to non-fiction books. Three are outstanding, to be read and re-read for years to come. The Flaubert-Sand Correspondence translated by Francis Steegmuller and Barbara Bray (Harvill, £20) is both immensely impressive as scholarship, a testament to the power of friendship and a great treat. The ageing George Sand, all silliness spent, is shown to be generous-hearted, shrewd, and unpretentious as she urges the obsessive Flaubert to take more exercise and rise above his odious critics; although the corre- spondence covers only ten years, it opens a window on their entire lives and approach to writing.
Other People (HarperCollins, £18), the latest volume of Frances Partridge's diaries, takes her through more tragedy and deals with the onset of old age without being at all depressing — a triumph both of character and style, as she fights off the dark with the help of travel, friends, work, and jokes. Finally, in The Civilisation of Europe in the Renaissance (HarperCollins, £25), John Hale has deployed his incompa- rable knowledge and deep love of the sub- ject in a rich, dense book which combines inspiring generalisation with idiosyncratic detail.
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