Across the literary pages | 8 December 2010

Christmas publishing stock was in the bookshops for the end of November, so in the absence of material to review, literary editors have roasted the last of their chestnuts with Books of the Year lists. For the most comprehensive list on politics, history, art, and international relations, fiction and poetry, the Economist’s is hard to beat.

Jane Shilling’s review of The Memory Chalet in the Telegraph is a tribute to Tony Judt, the historian and philosopher, who died in August. As he struggles to cope with the physical debilitations of motor neurone disease, he creates an intellectual memory bank in a holiday cottage his parents took in the Swiss Alps when he was a boy. Shilling notes that in 2010 the world lost one of its most careful and radical essayists:

“As a historian, university teacher and critic, Judt was notable for his clarity of thought, distrust of received opinion, eye for detail and pointed turn of phrase.