Books of the year | 22 November 2012

Byron Rogers

When TV presenters write history books it is the mistakes you treasure most, as when David Dimbleby blithely pronounced that Augustine had introduced Christianity to Britain (Christianity being over 200 years old in Britain, with Welsh bishops, before Augustine came). But Andrew Marr’s A History of the World (Macmillan, £25) is different. It is a distinguished work of history in its own right. The TV series wasn’t up to much, but the book is wonderful, and better than H.G. Wells’s The Outline of History. It made me wonder what else is deliberately hidden away to advance the careers of those prattling public faces that appear on our screens. All we need now is Simon Cowell’s concordance to the Gododdin.
 

Allan Massie

Simon Mawer’s novel of the French Resistance, The Girl Who Fell From the Sky (Little, Brown, £16.99) is enviably good. The picture of wartime Paris is chilling — a city where no one can be trusted and everyone has something to fear.