Paperbacks The winner of the lovely present stakes comes from Penguin at ?12.95-the com- plete works of George Eliot, with an introductory booklet by A. S. Byatt for the centenary. No ordinary slip case either, but almost a two-compartment little book- shelf, with a picture of the author on each end-one in youth, one in old age. She looked like a horse throughout, but a nice horse. The books are Adam'Bede, Romola, Silas Marner, Middlemarch, The Mill on the Floss, Scenes of Clerical Life, Daniel Deronda, and -Felix Holt. Who could ask for anything. -3ore? There's M. M. Kaye's duo, The Far Pavilions and Shadow of the Moon (Penguin, ?5.40), two vastly enter- taining stories of the Englishman (and wroman) in India. They're foul-weather books -open either of them and your mind is many thousands of miles awuay in another, warmer climate. Granada have two volumes by Doris Less- ing of Collected African stories This Was the Old Chiefls Country, The Sun Between Their Feet, and tiwo English Stories, The Temptation of Jack Orkney and To Room 19 (?6.25 the four). "Writers brought up in Africa have many advantagds," says Doris Lessing in the preface, "being the centre of a modern battlefield: part of a society in rapid, dramatic change." It is the country, above all, that one -remembers. "Africa gives you the knowledge that man is a small creature, among other creatures, in -a large landscape." From the horribly real to the unreal-or perhaps not-Tolkien fans would probably insist on the reality of the world they and J. R. R. Tolkien's creations inhabit -here is The Lord of the Rings in the three volumes boxed together, The FeUowship of the Ring, The Two Towers, and The Return of t7Lw King (Unwin Paperbacks, ?4.50) plus a little booklet commemorating 25 years of its publication, including a brief biography of the author, the publishing history of the book, and some facsimiles of letters and reviews, by C. S. Lewis, Edwin Muir and .W. H. Auden, -no less. XFor those who wish to be in the swim, Penguin have published. with admirable speed, the short list (with two exceptions) -of the Booker Prize-a splendid notion, and one which I hoPe they will be able to continue annually. So look out for The Beggar Maid, by Alice Munro. Clear Light of Day, by Anita Desai. - A Month in the Country, by J. L. Carr, Pascali's Island, by Barry Unsworth, and No Country for Young MZRen, by Julia- O'Faolain- (all at ?2.75 each). You can't keep-a reallv good hero down- 4nd The rifstories of Horatio Hornblower (Penguin, ?3.75) is a bargain lot, containing Mr Midshipman Hornblower, Hornblower and the Hotspur, The Happy Return, and A Ship of the Line-much imitated, never surpassed. To the vagaries of real life, Dirk Bogarde brings an accomplished pen. We all know that he is an excellent actor, but he- turns out to be a born writer, and the two voltmes of autobiography boxed together A Postillion Struck by Lightning and Snake, and Ladders (Granada, ?2.95) are delightful. They relate his happy childhood, plus some miserable adolescent years, and his life as a success- ful stage and filni actor The drawings are his, too. Joyce Grenfell was always de- scribed as " much loved " and for once the cliche is true. She was. In Pleasant Places (a sequel to Joyce Grenfell Requests the Pleasure) comes from Futura at ?1.50. Never a cross or unkind word, but I have just the smallest unregenerate feeling that I wished there had been. just one or tzvo. It's laughter all the way with A Gerald Durrell Menagerie (Penguin, ?4.25) which contains behind the bars The Druwiken Forest, Encounters with Animals, Three. Singles to Adventwe, and the one I love the best, My Famili) and Other Animals, in which the eminent natu.ralist and zoo owner appears as Gerry the Awful Child, and the other characters include one Distrac- ted Mother, one sister and two brothers, one of whom was the. awe-inspiring 23-year-old Larry (later the distinguished author-) The Magic Years of Beatrix Potter by Margaret Lane (Fontana, ?5.95) is a large-format paperback, in which the odd tale of Miss Potter is related with skill and sympathy, with the incomparable illustrations from her own hand, together with family photographs. t 9VR-%ffl &td'- "The Self Sufficiency MVIan " and in The Complete Food Garden (Fontana, ?6.50) he tells us all, from something basic, like wvhat a worm is for, to how to bottle and preserve the kdndly ftruits of your labours. (If you have any.) It's a huge, gorgeous book, beautifully illustrated, and I defy even those with the blackest of black thumbs not to feel moved to try again. Even on a window silL From growing food to cooking the stuff is but the easiest step, and several enefgetic ladies all have cookery book collections. Cook ith Delia Smith (Coronet, f4.50) contains doxvn-to-earth- advice for the busy, daily cook who hasn't much time: The Evening Standard Cookbook, Frugal Food (ivhich speaks for itself), The Book of Cakes, and How to Cheat at Cooking (Im all for that). Prudence Leith and Caroline Walde- grave have Leith's Cookery Course (Fontana, ?8.85) in three volumes based on the terms at Prue Leith's School of Food and Wine- Basic,.. Intermediate and Advanced. It tells you all you wanted to know about cooking but were afraid to ask, and you and those you cook for would benefit greatly if you put your mind to going through the course without flinching. Great pleasure may also be derived-and not only by the dedicated cook, just for the descriptions and the prose-from The Elizabeth David Collec- tion (Penguin, ?9.60) containing French Country Cooking, Summer Cooking, Italian Food, Mediterranean Food, French Provin- cial Cooking, English Bread and Yeast Cookery, and Spices, Salt and Aromatics in the English Kitchen. Wonderful for reading in bed. After that, Bombers and Mash, by Raynes Minns, might sound like a particularly indigestible recipe, but it is sub-tit]ed "The Domestic Front. 193945 ", from Virago at ?4.95. It fills one with wonder, awe, and incredulous laughter. How on earth did digestions -urvive Snoek Piquante, which included 4 chopped spring onions, 4 table- spoons vinegar, -1 can of snoek mashed, 2 teaspoons syrup, salt and I a teaspoon of pepper (presumably to disguise the ghastly taste of the snoek) ? Somerset Rook Pie and Figgy Paste sound pretty threatening, too. Advertisements, phlotographs and a thought- ful and unsentimental text add up to a splendid present for those who were there (and for those who weren't). On the whole, we are a marvellous sex. Someone else who is wonderful, in the rather mor-e conventional sense. has a picture book all her own in The Barbara Cartand Scrapbook (Argus Books, ?2.95). A lady who becomes better look3ing as the years go by, she seems to have been extensively photo- graphed at every age-and a fascinating slice of social history it is, too. In fact, I remem- ber being at the lunch to celebrate her 200th book (I sat between Nicholas Parsons and Norman Hartnel3 and enjoyed it very much). Mrs Cartland gives good parties, if that was anything to go by: and the book is a party from start to fiish, with every other moment a " famous " face for the rest of us to gape at. All profits go to the RPS National Centre of Photography Appeal Fund. Each year there is a crop of reference books for the filmgoer, and this time around the big one is HalliwelP's Film Guide (Pala- din, ?3.95). TEhe indefatigable Leslie Halli- wel1 provides 8,000 entries, stopping short in 1976. It will return. The Great American Movie Book, edited by Paul Michael (Pren- tice Hall, ?4.95) hedges its bets by calling itself " a comprehensive illustrated refer- ence guide to the best-loved films of the Sound Era " which doesn't mean everything- by any means. It is my evil habit to look up at least one of my favourite films in'this kind of b0ok-a bad taste masterpiece caIlled The Producers with the one and only Zero Mostel. Says Halliwell "Dismally unfunny satire" and quotes two -unfavourable reviews from TOm Milne and Arthur Schlesinger (Arthur Schlesinger?). The Great American Movie Book doesn't mention it at all. Coats and monkeys! If you love my favourite films, I'll beleve in you. David -Thomson's A Biographical Dictionarv of the Cinema (Secker & Warburg. ?5.95) described as a new and revised edition doesn't even men- tion Mostel - . . however, the entries on the people who do appear are so splendidly sharp, perceptive and fearfullv unkind that it's a gem. and no one should be without it. Compare iHarris, Richard and Harrison, Rex, side bv side alphabetically (and by a neat coincidence, married to the same lady at one time or another). "Works largely in the cinema or in the insecure world of 'a11 round personalities ', gig-ling his way through intemperate TV interviews" and " Age had made him a little warmer and heavier in personality, but he is still able to look li>e -an inane, high-pitclied Ague- cheek ". Ouch. For the stocking: Compliments, a treasury of tributes to friend and lovers, relatives and rivals, compiled bv Gertrude Buckman <Unwin Paperbacks, ?3.95) which is charm- ing; The Book of Heroic Failures, by Stephen Pile (Futura. 95o) which is hilarious; Graffiti 2. collected and compiled bv Roger Kiloy. illustrated by McLachlan (Corgi, ?1) which is b"th funny and rude; and mv favourite of all the season's greet- ings: " A cardinal rule of politics-never get caught in bed with a live mari or a -dead woman " from The Quotations of .T R. Ewing (Corgi, 75p). " Everv man has his wveak- ness ", says the appalling J.R. True, true. Mine is for villains It-,i T ney Paperbacks Stocking up for Christmas