Gaspers and champagne
Simon Gray's wonderful, funny The Smoking Diaries makes Stephanie Merritt want to have dinner with the survivor who has lived life to the full
The elusive Mr Greene
If anyone could portray the real Graham Greene, it should have been his companion of 30 years. Robert McCrum is disappointed by Yvonne Cloetta's In Search of a Beginning
The plot thickens
David Riggs's The World of Christopher Marlowe leaves the doomed playwright as fascinating and as mysterious as ever, says Jane Stevenson
Victoria’s secret
She works for the glossiest of glossy magazines, socialises with the Park Avenue princesses she writes about, and sold her first novel for $600,000. But has Plum Sykes of Sevenoaks taken Manhattan, or has Manhattan taken her? Hadley Freeman finds out.
Earth and stones
Mourid Barghouti's personal and emotional look at the Palestine question, I Saw Ramallah, touches Avi Shlaim
The man within
Ian Thomson welcomes Yvonne Cloetta's In Search of a Beginning, a life of Graham Greene that is faithful to the person, not the gossip
Gielgud’s secret life in the nether lands
Richard Mangan's selection of Gielgud's letters will do little to embellish his reputation, says Peter Conrad
King of the jungle
John Banville warms to Joe Eszterhas, screenwriter extraordinaire and a true Hollywood Animal
Victorian values
Jane Pugin's touching journal, Dearest Augustus and I, moves Jonathan Glancey to tears
Confessions of a serial dabbler
The eccentric, aimless life of Sweden's Queen Christina fascinates Frances Wilson in Veronica Buckley's wonderfully rich and poignant book
You can’t put a throttle on a bottle
The Smoking Diaries, Simon Gray's rant against a 'nasty, stupid' world, is a masterpiece of grim humour, says Jenny Diski
Beak practice
John Mannion enjoys an insider's view of the staff room in Francis Gilbert's I'm a Teacher, Get Me Out of Here!
Reality studios
Matthew Collings welcomes the first substantial biography of Bill Brandt, despite Paul Delaney's penchant for psycho-babble
Beware the spinner spurned
Martin Sixsmith, forced out as a civil servant in the Jo Moore affair, has taken his revenge in the form of a novel. Oliver Burkeman wades through the venomous prose.
The poetry and passion of exile
Mourid Barghouti's account of the grief that rips stateless families apart, I Saw Ramallah, shows what it means to be Palestinian today, says Martin Bright