William Makepeace Thackeray’s The History of Henry Esmond, Esquire was published in 1852, but it’s still splendid. Diarmaid MacCulloch’s A History of Christianity (Allen Lane, £35) deftly surveys faith and apparat from Jewish and Greek musings to the latest clergy squabble. A masterpiece! Roy Hattersley’s The Great Outsider (Little, Brown, £25) shows Lloyd George’s flaws, occasional convictions vitiated by double-dealing with the Tories in 1911, even as he helped destroy the presumptuous Lords. He sought a “government of first raters, leaving out the duffers.” That became reverence for great men, which led this off-great politician to admire Adolf Hitler. By contrast, Jonathan Fenby’s The General (Simon & Schuster, £30) concerns disloyal-to-the-US Charles De Gaulle, a great man who was nothing less. Andy McSmith’s club sandwich, No Such Thing as Society (Constable, £14.99) does ’80s Britain exhaustively – and not just the politics. It is the good journalism you get from this good journalist.
Edward Pearce
My prime choice is The Road (MacLehose Press, £17.99) Vasily Grossman’s magnificent collection of essays on his reflections about life and death in the Soviet Union during the war in which he served both as a war correspondent and a sniper in the Red Army. He is a modern Tolstoy in my opinion. Second choice is A World on Fire: An Epic History of Two Nations Divided (Allen Lane, £30) Amanda Foreman’s extraordinary 988 pages on the American Civil War, shortly to be reviewed in Tribune. My final selection is not about war but peace – cricket. A Last English Summer by Duncan Hamilton (Quercus, £20) is a beautifully written book which contains a series of observations and thoughts on the greatest sport of all. Pure poetry from the author of a brilliant biography of Harold Larwood, England’s finest fast bowler, of Bodyline fame, but that book was bowled last year…
Geoffrey Goodman
The New Machiavelli (The Bodley Head, £20), Jonathan Powell’s account of the Blair years, is by far the best written on the subject. Devastating to Brown worshippers. Wolf Hall (4th Estate, £8.99), Hilary Mantel’s fictional biography of Thomas Cromwell, is a delight, as is The Black Swan (Penguin, £9.99), Nassim Nicholas Taleb’s book which renders all political and economic prophets redundant. Not 2010, but newish to me. Plus, of course, The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo trilogy by Stieg Larsson.
Joe Haines
The dignity, tolerance and compassion of the man as well as his passion and determination for justice shines through Nelson Mandela: In His Own Words (Abacus, £14.99). His fortitude against apartheid and his drive to build a new, free and fair South Africa confirms his status as a world icon. Geoffrey Goodman’s concise biography of Bill Morris (Blackamber Books, £6.99) is a well-written story of the first black trade union general secretary which provokes and informs. Bus driver turned novelist Magnus Mills’ The Maintenance of Headway (Bloomsbury, £7.99) is an excellent short story about the bus industry with a surrealist tweak for which he is now renowned. Andrew Dodgshon
Reading The Gilded Stage: A Social History of Opera by Daniel Snowman (Atlantic Books, £40) is like eating a whole box of chocolates. This gorgeous volume is a comprehensive history of opera by a cultural historian devoted to music. The balance between telling detail and the grand narrative of one civilization’s major achievements is faultless, covering opera’s origins, economic, social and political structures, developments in musical composition, performance and social consumption. Despite production invariably costing more than its yield, the universal and enduring appeal is undeniable and its place in cultural life in from its origins in 17th century Italy, then across Europe to thrive in America and Australia, is well documented and well seasoned with striking anecdote. A masterpiece of learning lightly carried.
Robert Giddings
I’m a sucker for deceptively simple prescriptions for living and How to Live: A Life of Montaigne in One Question and Twenty Attempts at an Answer by Sarah Bakewell (Chatto & Windus, £16.99) is an enchanting example. Few historical figures live with us as vividly as Montaigne, thanks to his unblinking study of himself. Bakewell presents him through his answers to the title’s question, among them “Be born”, “Question everything” and “Be ordinary and imperfect”.
Andrew Langley
In fiction, book of the year by a mile is The Thousand Autumns of Jacob de Zoet by David Mitchell (Sceptre, £18.99), who just keeps getting better and better with each novel. Non-fiction choice has to be Whoops! Why Everyone Owes Everyone and No One Can Pay (Penguin, £9.99), John Lanchester’s magisterial account of how the greed and stupidity of the bankers brought us to our present calamitous state.
Peter Whittaker
I enjoy everything by PJ O’Rourke but Driving Like Crazy (Atlantic Books, £17.99) was different to his rants about political issues. He is a car enthusiast and writes with love and affection about his family, his travels and cars generally, all laced with his trademark sense of humour. Seamus Heaney’s Human Chain (Faber & Faber, £12.99) is proof, if we needed any more, of his poetic genius. Memories and challenges are handled delicately and deeply in a superb collection.
Joe Cushnan
Two autobiographies have gripped my attention. The reissue of Lorna Sage’s bestseller Bad Blood (4th Estate, £8.99) tells of her turbulent childhood in the 1940s and ’50s with her dysfunctional grandparents in a remote vicarage. Moving and beautifully observed, she describes how a lonely child, against the odds, acquires a university education and goes on to become a highly respected writer. The other is Edmund de Waal’s The Hare With Amber Eyes (Chatto & Windus, £17.95). His sensitive, closely observed memoir demonstrates how a thriving and wealthy community of Jews was dispersed – or killed – by the Nazis.
Emmanuel Cooper
The publication of the “new” Autobiography of Mark Twain (University of California, £25) is the literary event of the year, if not the century. The father of American literature decreed that his acerbic witticisms, exquisite self-portraits and lacerating anti-imperialist views remain unpublished for 100 years and only emerge when he would be “dead, and unaware and indifferent”. What a treat this is for fans of the grand Missourian, whose most magnificent works can now be viewed in their intended context. Christopher Hitchens’ memoir Hitch-22 (Atlantic, £20) is an extraordinarily erudite, artistically written, humorous, moving and powerful exposition of the uncompromisingly anti-totalitarian beliefs of one of our greatest writers.
David Harounoff
While the liberal intelligentsia on both sides of the Atlantic blindly supported the election of corporate America’s favourite presidential candidate, the historian Paul Street was busy providing the sharpest and most comprehensive left-wing critique of the Obama phenomenon. The Empire’s New Clothes: Barack Obama in the Real World of Power (Paradigm, £15.99) expertly details his murderous aggression in Afghanistan, Pakistan, Somalia and Yemen as well as his Wall Street friendly policies at home. Essential.
Ian Sinclair
This was the year that, as a Tribune book reviewer, I went to war. To Montana for Nathanial Philbrick’s The Last Stand (The Bodley Head, £20) with General Custer at the Little Bighorn, and to South Africa for what should have been a last stand but turned into a stunning British victory at Rorke’s Drift in Zulu Rising by Ian Knight (Sidgwick & Jackson, £20). But my book of the year is Moral Combat by Michael Burleigh (Harper Press, £30) examining the moral dilemmas of total warfare with its gratifying conclusion that, in comparison with the Axis powers, the Allies were the good guys.
Nigel Nelson
