The Best Books of 2014

It is, alas, Christmas again, which means that the newspapers, at least those which contain words, are full of people telling you which books they have enjoyed most this year. So I thought I would pitch in.

I have read far more books on politics this year than in any year since I started recording what I read. By far the finest is the re-issue of Gyles Brandreth’s parliamentary diaries Breaking the Code. These are the best political diaries I have read since Chris Mullin’s, and are far funnier.

Whilst on the subject of political diaries, the greatest hits of Tony Benn, who left us earlier this year, has been published (The Best of Benn). Ruth Winstone has done an excellent job in editing down the tens of thousands of diary entries, essays, interviews and speeches given by Benn over a truly remarkable life and career.

Other political books I have particularly enjoyed this year include Michael Jago’s Clement Attlee: The Inevitable Prime Minister and Dennis Skinner’s Sailing Close to the Wind. The Establishment by Owen Jones and Private Island by James Meek made me angry at the elitist clique that runs our lives and has sold us out, and despair at the mountain we must climb to take control. In a case of missing the boat, I cannot recommend Gordon Brown’s My Scotland, Our Britain highly enough. Like his earlier book on the economy, it was thoughtful and outlines the true, patriotic reason for Scotland remaining in the Union and why we should all be so thankful that it did.

Away from politics, this year marked the centenary of the outbreak of the Great War. To mark this I have read a good deal on the War. I write this having just finished re-reading Sebastian Faulks’ masterpiece Birdsong, still the most moving First World War novel I have ever read. I have also particularly enjoyed The Good Soldier Švejk by Jaroslav Hašek, the story of the overly patriotic Švejk and his bumbling attempts to reach the front after he is called up to the Austro-Hungarian Army. A classic too little read in this country.

An interesting work on the contribution made by the public schools to the war effort is Anthony Seldon’s book Public Schools and the Great War, it catalogues the horrific losses suffered by junior officers on the Western Front as they led their platoons over the top. One in five former public school boys who went to the Front died there, a higher ratio than any other demographic group. Seldon’s book, as with all his works, is well researched and detailed and challenges the ‘lions led by donkeys’ consensus far more effectively than Michael Gove’s bizarre attacks on Blackadder.

If first hand accounts of the war are more your line of thing then your cannot do better than to reach for Robert Graves autobiography Good-Bye To All That, it may well be the most remarkable memoir I have ever read. Penguin has re-released the original 1929 edition, which is rawer, and what I believe the critics call grittier, than the comparatively restrained, somewhat anodyne later versions.

Two books I was grateful for reading this year were Italio Calvino’s The Baron in the Trees and Tim Parks’ Italian Ways. The former lifted me from a period of melancholy in the spring whilst the latter’s warm and paternal reminisces of journeys on the Italian Railways distracted me greatly and cheered me as we drove around a small corner of that beautiful country in the late summer.

In fiction, The Long Road to the Deep North was a worthy winner of the Mann Booker Prize and a deeply moving story the of human suffering involved in the building of the death railway in Burma during the dark days of World War Two. For my money How to be Both by Ali Smith was the best of the shortlist, an all to rare thing, a novel which makes you see the world a little differently. My other favourite novel I have read this year is The Children Act by Ian McEwan, how it escaped the Booker shortlist I don’t know. For my money it is the best novel McEwan has done for several years and ranks alongside Amsterdam as one of his finest works.

As the New Year approaches I am hoping to finish two books that have dogged me this year, the first is Capital in the Twenty-First Century by the French economist Thomas Piketty and the other is Absolute Recoil by Slovenian philosopher Slavoj žižek both are endlessly fascinating and both are important books but both seem to have back covers which retreat from you.

I also look forward to reading the second volume of Alan Johnson’s autobiography, Please, Mister Postman. The first volume, This Boy, sits half-read on my bedside table and volume two awaits as my reward for finishing volume one.

In fiction, and in continuance of my marking the war, my eye has been caught by Parades End, and All Quiet on the Western Front, both of which have graced by shelves for a number of years now but neither of which I have read.

I also await with anticipation the memoirs of Messrs Cameron, Clegg and Osborne. I hope that the latter part of next year will find them suitably unemployed and at liberty to start drafting.

The book everyone is raving about is The English and their History by Robert Tombs, I wouldn’t resent finding that in my stocking on Christmas morning.

Fiction

The Baron in the Trees, - Italio Calvino, (Harcourt) - http://tinyurl.com/pxfxx8m

Birdsong – Sebastian Faulks, (Vintage) - http://tinyurl.com/obnzc86

Long Road to the Deep North – Richard Flanagan, (Vintage) - http://tinyurl.com/lv3d6ws

Parade’s End – Ford Madox Ford, (Penguin) - http://tinyurl.com/m4asg5h

The Good Soldier Švejk – Jaroslav Hašek, (Penguin) - http://tinyurl.com/lfl7uau

The Children Act – Ian McEwan, (Vintage) - http://tinyurl.com/lhebmwh

All Quiet on the Western Front - Erich Maria Remarque, (Vintage) - http://tinyurl.com/kzjek92

How to be Both – Ali Smith, (Penguin) - http://tinyurl.com/kc8vy6o

Non-Fiction

The Best of Benn – Tony Benn, Ruth Winstone (ed.), (Cornerstone) - http://tinyurl.com/npkjrz2

Breaking the Code – Gyles Brandreth, (Biteback) - http://tinyurl.com/n8gt3ad

My Scotland, Our Britain – Gordon Brown, (Bantam Press) - http://tinyurl.com/pnnz3nj

Good-Bye To All That – Robert Graves, (Penguin) - http://tinyurl.com/qfymxcq

Clement Attlee: The Inevitable Prime Minister – Michael Jago, (Biteback) - http://tinyurl.com/lw7j3vl

Please, Mr Postman – Alan Johnson, (Transworld) - http://tinyurl.com/kxjcwh2

This Boy – Aland Johnson, (Transworld) - http://tinyurl.com/k7cbnuv

The Establishment – Owen Jones, (Allen Lane) - http://tinyurl.com/pmlp4do

Private Island – James Meet, (Verso) - http://tinyurl.com/lroc486

Italian Ways - Tim Parks, (Vintage) - http://tinyurl.com/oa98kjc

Capital in the Twenty-First Century, Thomas Piketty, (Harvard) - http://tinyurl.com/le4p8ak

Public Schools and the Great War – Anthony Seldon, (Pen and Sword Books) - http://tinyurl.com/kxh2erm

Sailing Close to the Wind – Dennis Skinner, (Quercus) - http://tinyurl.com/kaxngan

The English and their History – Robert Tombs, (Penguin) - http://tinyurl.com/mcv9kpf

Absolute Recoil – Slavoj žižek, (Verso) - http://tinyurl.com/pkhw5gj