The books I liked best this year were all richly detailed. Why read a book unless it’s going to go into all the nooks and crannies? Everyone is going to recommend Sofka Zinovieff’s The Mad Boy, Lord Berners, My Grandmother and Me (Cape, £25) about the ménage at Faringdon House. And rightly so — it is the story that everyone wanted told, and she was the person to tell it.
Stephen Lloyd’s Constant Lambert: Beyond the Rio Grande (Boydell Press, £45) was wonderfully complete, and this composer-conductor, epic drinker and best friend of Anthony Powell is exactly the sort of minor enchanting figure who too often gets fobbed off with a brief skate-through. I finished it thinking that someone ought to bring out Lambert’s collected letters.
Michael Kater’s excellent Weimar: From Enlightenment to the Present (Yale, £25) chronicles a town that hosted some staggering bouts of unpleasant behaviour — or so it turns out.
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