Books of the Year | 5 November 2011

Our regular reviewers were asked to name the books they’d most enjoyed reading this year. More choices next week

•  A.N. Wilson

Rachel Campbell-Johnson’s Mysterious Wisdom: The Life and Work of Samuel Palmer (Bloomsbury, £25) is one of those rare biographies which is a work of literature: beautifully written, overwhelmingly moving. A great art critic, with an understanding of the human heart has produced this masterpiece. It is one of the best biographies I have ever read of anyone: it captures the tragedy of Palmer’s life, and brings out the shimmering glory, the iridescent secrets of his Shoreham phase.

Matthew Sturgis’s When in Rome: 2,000 Years of Roman Sightseeing (Frances Lincoln, £20) is a totally original way of writing about the inexhaustible subject of Rome. Each chapter represents a different era of taste, from ancient to modern times: which artefacts and great sites were most popular in which era. Sturgis is a wonderful guide, the writing is always sprightly, and even if you think you know Rome and its history backwards, here is a book which will contain a surprise on every page.

Craig Brown’s One on One (Fourth Estate, £16.99) is a daisy-chain of meetings, starting with Hitler being run over by Lord Howard de Walden, Lord Howard in turn meeting Kipling, Kipling meeting Mark Twain, Twain meeting Helen Keller and so on. The encounters between Khrushchev and Marilyn Monroe and between Edward Heath and Terence Stamp were especially good. Much of this tragi-farcical Dance to the Music of Time is wistful and moving, as well as howlingly funny.

• Philip Ziegler


In her biography of William Morris Fiona MacCarthy opened a window onto the brilliantly talented yet curiously anaemic world of the Pre-Raphaelites and their associates. In The Last Pre-Raphaelite (Faber, £25) she switches her attention to Morris’s once great friend and later stern critic, Edward Burne-Jones.