"Since the death of Tony Benn, it is hard to think of any other living person who has chronicled his own life with quite such diligence," wrote Craig Brown in the Mail on Sunday in a caustic review of Travelling to Work: Diaries 1988-1998 by "the nice, genuine, amusing, etc, etc Michael Palin". The entries "contain nothing uncalled for: nothing upsetting or outrageous, nothing offputting or embarrassing or even mildly satirical … Showbiz is to the fore … Regarding other people, he is as sharp as a blancmange … Palin is a master of the untelling anecdote … He is also unexpectedly vain, or at least ravenous for praise". Complaining about his absence from the honours list, Palin also reveals "a powerful sense of entitlement". The Sunday Times extracted the diaries; even so its reviewer, Helen Davies, described the book as "breathless with encounters with the famous … He reveals an almost aggressive competitive streak, especially when it comes to how many books he sells". Nevertheless, the natural order of things soon reasserts itself: "It is a book you find yourself devouring in great greedy sessions."
"Outline is Rachel Cusk's first work of fiction for five years. Her last book, Aftermath, was a memoir recounting the fallout from the breakup of her marriage and was so mesmerisingly whiney and narcissistic that it … won Camilla Long … the Hatchet Job of the Year award for her excoriating review. Cusk's writing may sometimes be infuriating, self-indulgent and occasionally worthy of a nomination for Pseuds Corner but, to her credit, it is rarely that most dreaded thing: dull." The verdict of Carol Midgley in the Times was largely positive for the new book, which centres on a writer's trip to Athens: "It is a rich, thoughtful read … There are some profound insights into human failings and frailty, into lack of self-awareness, though almost every character is in some way irritating, which makes it hard to care much about them." Elena Seymenliyska in the Daily Telegraph gave the novel five stars out of five. It is, she argued, full of "wonderful surprises: subtle shifts in power and unexpectedly witty interludes". For Lucy Scholes in the Independent, Outline, like the non-fiction before it, "is a book about what it means to be a woman, but in it Cusk has transformed sentiment that was derided as gushing self-obsession and self-pity into a uniquely graceful and innovative piece of artistic self-possession."
We think of Queen Victoria as austere and sombre but, noted Dominic Sandbrook in the Evening Standard reviewing AN Wilson's Victoria: A Life, she "loved joking, music and dancing. Her portraits showed her as stiff and forbidding; in private, however, she was proud, warm, kind-hearted and impulsive." Sandbrook described the biography as "splendid … this book is a gem: thoughtful, witty, insightful, striking a perfect balance between political commentary and personal gossip … there really was a human being behind the gloomy portraits." According to Jane Ridley in the Spectator, "this superb revisionist biography" is the book Wilson "was born to write … At last Victoria has been rescued from her widow's weeds." But Piers Brendon in the Independent disagreed: "… he has unearthed little of real significance. It's certainly not enough to alter the familiar picture of Queen Victoria as enshrined in the vast literature about her life … In Wilson's pages she remains the emotional girl, the passionate wife, the scolding mother, the hysterical widow, the imperious sovereign, the antique icon … Wilson's account is marred by slapdash writing, poor organisation and other signs of haste."
