Charlotte Moore

Spectator books of the year: Charlotte Moore enjoyed Barry’s novel on Irish drunkenness

Common People by Alison Light (Fig Tree, £20) is a shot in the arm for family historians like me. Her wise, wide-ranging interpretations of her family’s past elevate our dusty grubbings to the status of ‘real’ history. Sebastian Barry’s A Temporary Gentleman (Faber, £17.99) stood out amongst novels about Irish drunkenness, or drunken Irishness, because the grandeur of the prose made it soar.

The most satisfactory re-reading of the year was Siegfried Sassoon’s Great War trilogy, Memoirs of a Fox-hunting Man, Memoirs of an Infantry Officer and Sherston’s Progress.

Already a subscriber? Log in

Keep reading with a free trial

Subscribe and get your first month of online and app access for free. After that it’s just £1 a week.

There’s no commitment, you can cancel any time.

Or

Unlock more articles

REGISTER

Comments

Don't miss out

Join the conversation with other Spectator readers. Subscribe to leave a comment.

Already a subscriber? Log in