The Duke of Wellington also invades Christmas art books

Art books fall naturally into various categories, of which the most common is probably the monograph. Judith Zilczer’s A Way of Living: The Art of Willem de Kooning (Phaidon, £59.95, Spectator Bookshop, £53.95) examines its hero’s career from his extraordinarily accomplished — and resolutely conventional — teenage productions, by way of his glorious middle years, on to the final works, which were created when he was suffering from Alzheimer’s. Lavishly illustrated not only with works by the artist, but also with photographs of him and his friends, it does full justice to his towering — if not always entirely lovable — achievement.

A broadly similar approach to another modern great is adopted in The Essential Cy Twombly (Thames & Hudson, £50, Spectator Bookshop, £42) by Nicola del Roscio, Simon Schama, Kirk Varnedoe, Laszlo Glozer, and Thierry Greub, the obvious difference being that a mere three years after his death, it is far harder to be sure whether posterity will agree with the selection.