Some of our Regular Contributors

Hugh Massingberd Surrounded by spin, mealy-mouthed political correctness and Orwellian ‘newspeak’, I longed for the absolute frankness demanded by the Memoir Club of Old Bloomsubry — and found it in A. N. Wilson’s joyfully funny Iris Murdoch As I Knew Her (Hutchinson, £18.99); the tenth volume of James Lees-Milne’s addictive diaries, Beneath a Waning Moon (John Murray, £22.50); Beaton in the Sixties: More Unexpurgated Diaries edited by Hugo Vickers (Weidenfeld, £25); and James Delingpole’s Thinly Disguised Autobiogra- phy (Picador, £12.99), which contains the most truthful descriptions of sex from the male point of view that I have ever read.

Clive James Three books of non-fictional prose kept me awake like thrillers. Frederic Raphael’s The Benefits of Doubt (Carcanet, £14.95) is an exemplary book of humanist essays, although I would hate to have him doubting me, because he makes me laugh too hard when he doubts Heidegger. Published posthumously, D. J. Enright’s Injury Time (Pimlico, £12.50) is only part of his memorial: the full set of his volumes of casual reflections distills the civilised views of an era. Richard Eyre’s National Service (Bloomsbury, £18.99), subtitled ‘The Diary of a Decade’, inhabits two different political worlds. ‘Terrifying events in Yugo- slavia,’ he notes on 18 April 1993, ‘and we’re helpless.