5 JANUARY 1985, Page 24

Richard West

Michael Wharton's The Missing Will is the best autobiography I have read this year. He is one of the last bohemians. Graham Greene's Getting to Know the General has been accused of sentimental indulgence to Latin American Marxists. Maybe. But it was great fun. Kingsley Amis, in Stanley and the Women, created the first and all too credible feminist monster in modern fiction. Let us hope he returns to that theme.

The year also produced an enlightening and, as it happened, timely book on Ethiopia — Haile Selassie's War by Anthony Mockler. It is a valuable antidote to the trendy drivel written by people like Basil Davidson, whose The Story of Africa is the worst book I have read this year.