A.n. Wilson

Elizabeth Longford's Darling LoosY (Weidenfeld, £16.95) is a selection of letters to Princess Louise, the accom- plished sculptress who had the double misfortune of Queen......

Taki

As I plan to write the great Greek novel soon, I've been gorging on fiction. A Theft (Penguin, £3.50) is a Saul Bellow novella 109 pages long. (Perfect for a lazy Greek). It is......

Richard Cobb

I greatly enjoyed Invitation to the Married Life (Sinclair-Stevenson, £13.95) by Angela Huth. She is a marvellously sharp observer, especially of her female characters. She......

Eric Christiansen

I'm probably the last man alive not to have read the books of R.K. Narayan, who seems to have been at it since 1935. This year I made up for lost time, with The Financial Expert......

P.j. Kavanagh

Apart from a belated discovery of the interest of Roy Fuller's last poems (Consolations, Seeker, £5.95, and Available for Dreams, CollinsHarvill, £11), which do not properly......

John Biffen

This has been a politician's year. Margaret Thatcher's demise has provoked a torrent of analysis. The former Prime Minister's Press Secretary, Bernard Ingham (Kill the......

Christopher Hawtree

Perhaps the year's greatest revelations were contained in Dame Ethel Smyth's Mass (Virgin, £12.99) and Bob Dylan's The Bootleg Series (Sony, £25). Two novels — each comedies but......