David Hockney in coversation with Paul Joyce: Hockney on 'Art'

What a wealth of delicious ambiguity is contained in those apostrophes! Here is a sumptuous book of Hockney's own work, matched to a series of long running and profound conversations with Paul Joyce about painting and photography and anything else that interested them. Hockney's own collage photography receives a lot of attention - not just a gimmick, but an hommage to cubism. Hockney discusses the pictures of other artists he admires, Picasso, Rembrandt and Freud for example and photographers (Sander, Capa, Cartier-Bresson) whose work has impressed him.

Style note: just look at the Hockney interior: it's a photo - really - but the trellis and its shadow makes it look just like one his pictures. This book is an unmissable account by Britain's most popular and prolific living artist of his own life and work

Little, Brown: 30.00

Simon Jenkins: England's Thousand Best Churches

You'll love arguing with this book. Inevitably, Jenkins has not made the same choices as you would have: that's half the fun. Berwick parish church deservedly is included; Chillingham with its marvellous statuary is excluded. You can't have everything.

What you have got is a superb book to use as a gazetter when contemplating a little Larkin-esque church visiting. A dull tripdown the A1 could be enlivened with stops at Bedale and Studley Royal. Bored with Leeds? Take yourself out to Adel, where St John boasts a Norman doorway and chancel arch. The possibilities for detours and longer trips are endless. Beautiful colour photos from the Country Life archive.

Allen Lane: 25.00

Simon Schama: Rembrandt's Eyes

Schama is perhaps the most talented historian of our generation. Certainly he is a writer of immense breadth. Citizens gave a new look to the French Revolution; Landscape and Memory changed the way we look at landscape and its representations.

His first interest was the Dutch Republic, and this background stands him in good stead for this inter-disciplinary work on the life and art of Rembrandt. This most universal of painters is depicted against a meticulously detailed background of cultural and social history. I quote. 'No artist had ever been so fascinated by the
fashioning of personae, including his own. No painter ever looked with such unsparing intelligence or such bottomless compassion at our entrances and our exits and the whole rowdy show in between.'

Allen Lane: 30.00


Steve Bell: Bell's Eye

'Twenty Years of Drawing Blood.' Wonderful subtitle for this retrospective of the Steve Bell cartoons that have so enlivened the pages of the Guardian. Mutinous penguins from the Falklands War, Heseltine as Tarzan, the French painter (Wher is ma wooman weez ma curp of tea?), Major's underpants and Blair's 419 varieties of baked MP are all here.
Methuen, 12.99

Those who appreciate this irreverence about politics might also like Things Can Only Get Bettter (John O'Farrell, 6.99) and Labour Camp (Stephen Bayley, 6.99) The later contains this gem: Q. Why do people take an instant dislike to Peter Mandelson? A. To save time later.

Jane Brown: The Pursuit of Paradise

To the innocent the garden is a place for relaxation and creativity. Jane Brown shows that in reality it is the site where competing ideas of fashion fight it out; where status is displayed - or lost; where conflicts between experts and amateurs are played out.Our ideas of the desirable garden change just like other fashions. For example, the cult of Gertrude Jekyll may be on the wane at the moment and style slaves are busily looking for a replacement. Brown charts the vagaries of fashion over two or three centuries in abook that is full of fascinating detail - and lavish illustrations.

Errol Fuller: The Great Auk

We have early copies of this extraordinary book. Concerned to the point of obsession with a species that became extinct in June 1844 (we can be that precise), Fuller mixes scholarship in many fields with his skill as a natural history artist to produce a book that is full of goodness as a Christmas pudding. Errol catalogues the sad remains - skins and eggs - of the auk, describes the natural history of its extinguished life cycle and examines the impact of the auk on popular culture: apparently there was a brand of cigarette in England called Great Auk. Extinct now of course. Fuller's obsession shows how expensive scholarship can be. He reckons his great auk mania has cost him around $200,000. He is 'not quite sure how I came by that amount of money honestly.' Exhaustive, scholarly, beautifully produced, above all - fascinating.

Great Auk Publishing: £45

Jochen Hemmleb: Ghosts of Everest

I was prepared for this to be a mere spin-off from the TV series. Of course it could not have been written without TV money to finance the expedition that set out to look for the remains of Mallory and Irvine. But there the influence ends. In fact, the author is critically aware of the politics of co-production. The core excitement comes from the finding of Mallory's body and the clash of climbing cultures this exemplifies: 'We weren't just looking at a body, we were looking through an era, one we'd only known through books. The natural fibre clothes, the fur-lined leather helmet, the kind of rope...were all so eloquent. The hob-nail boot, of course, was a giveaway.' Did Mallory and Irvine actually reach the top of Everest, predating Hunt and Tensing's success? Did they die on the way up or the way down? The book has no hard and fast answer, but offers a much better informed quality of ignorance.

Macmillan: £20

Colin Dexter: The Remorseful Day.

Dexter has done it. Morse is dead. (In fact the latinate Dexter was going to call the book Mors, but his publisher thought we wouldn't understand it). A typically adroit and complicated plot with the relationship between Morse and Lewis sensitively portrayed. The last chapters are not so much harrowing as poignant. In a manner reminiscent of Hardy, events conspire to prevent our heroes' final messages ever reaching each other. Will Dexter get away with it? Will the public demand a resurrection like that of Holmes after the affair at the Reichenbach Falls?

Macmillan, £16.99

Andrew Brown: The Six Dimensions of Leadership

Often management books are facile. Often academic books are written for a tiny audience. Andrew Brown has achieved that rare feat: a book of substance which is at the same time accessible and well-written. For him, leadership is not some simple one-dimensional property. Rather it involves six complex and related models of the leader's role. The leader has to be at different times and in different proportions: a hero, an ambassador, an actor, a power-broker, even a victim. This book will appeal to anyone, both in business and private life, who is interested in improving their skills in getting the best out of themselves and other people.

Random House, £17.99

Martin Parr: Boring Postcards

You'll remember the character in Catch 22, who sought out boredom because, as they say, time flew when you were having fun. Parr's collection would have further slowed down the experience of the long dureé. If you feel fraught and stressed you'll feel your pulse slow as you open this book at almost any page. The subway, Oldham, 1960 is calming. The bus station, Ashton under Lyne produces a pleasant lethargy. Take in the Transport and General Workers' Union Convalescent Home and its counterpart owned by the Hearts of Oak Benefit society. You're calm and bored and the next quarter of an hour seems to stretch ahead of you for days and days. Prepare for the Canteen at Stoke Mandeville Hospital. This will make your allotted span seem like eternity.

Phaidon, £14.95

Steve Jones: Almost Like a Whale

Post modernism is concerned with re-inscription. Here the model moves to science, where Jones writes a palimpsest on the Darwinian version of The Origin of Species. This is a wonderful idea; some of Darwin's own phrases crop up from time to time, only to be followed by Jones's account of recent research on, say, AIDS. This tension between a text, some of whose phrases have entered the language, and the most up to date research reveals each in a new light. Above all, Jones wears his learning lightly: "...the sexual interests of males and females differ. It pays all males to be lazy, selfish and debauched, while any female is better off with an active, helpful and faithful spouse. Such paragons are hard to find..." This is a real contribution to the popularisation of modern scientific knowledge.

Doubleday: £20.00

Brian Moynahan: The British Century

Brian Moynahan has written a clear and accessible account of the century from the point of view of these islands. He has subtle and unobvious points to make about imperialism and popular culture, for example. However his quite lengthy text is dwarfed by the density of the photographs and their iconic nature. The heroes of folk mythology and of the popular press are limned in almost every photograph. We have Lillie Langtry reclining next to a photo of Edward VII - kitted out in fancy dress. We have (as yet undoomed) Malcolm Campbell on Pendine Sands. We have Gracie Fields climbing a ladder to sing to workers on a bomb site. There are peers dodging the rain to attend the coronation of the present Queen; there are tower blocks, op art and Carnaby Street for the '60s; there is Blair and Branson and Roddick for this present decade. The picture editors, Sarah Jackson and Annabel Merullo, deserve every point of type they receive in the credits on the title page. A WONDERFUL PRESENT.

Seven Dials: £16.99

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