The Spectator’s Books of the Year 2020
Our turkeys were stuffed and now we are too. Reclining helplessly in the recovery position, our thoughts turn to feasts future. What better way to show your friends and family that you love them, and also that you have impeccable taste, than sending them a book? In The Spectator’s stocking-stuffing December issue our staff, writers and friends make their seasonal suggestions for Books of the Year: stack upon stack of the most riotous reads, bibliographical beauties and pandemical page-turners. P.J. O’Rourke The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, Volume I, by Gibbon, because in this year of scourge and collapsing polity it seemed apposite. And only Volume I, due to reader fatigue after 582 pages and the shift in Volume II to the history of Byzantium.
