Spectator books of the year: Philip Hensher urges you to read We Are All Completely Beside Ourselves before someone tells you the twist

The books I liked best this year were all richly detailed. Why read a book unless it’s going to go into all the nooks and crannies? Everyone is going to recommend Sofka Zinovieff’s The Mad Boy, Lord Berners, My Grandmother and Me (Cape, £25) about the ménage at Faringdon House. And rightly so — it is the story that everyone wanted told, and she was the person to tell it.

Stephen Lloyd’s Constant Lambert: Beyond the Rio Grande (Boydell Press, £45) was wonderfully complete, and this composer-conductor, epic drinker and best friend of Anthony Powell is exactly the sort of minor enchanting figure who too often gets fobbed off with a brief skate-through. I finished it thinking that someone ought to bring out Lambert’s collected letters.

Michael Kater’s excellent Weimar: From Enlightenment to the Present (Yale, £25) chronicles a town that hosted some staggering bouts of unpleasant behaviour — or so it turns out. Oddly enough, I thought I loved Weimar, but I finished the book feeling I never wanted to go there again.

James Hamilton’s A Strange Business (Atlantic, £25) is one of the best works of art history for years — a riveting account of how Constable, Turner and contemporaries made (or failed to make) their money. Material for two dozen historical novels here.

I found this year disappointing for novels, though much enjoyed Karen Joy Fowler’s We Are All Completely Beside Ourselves (Serpent’s Tail, £7.99). You should read it quickly, though, before someone tells you the twist.