Telling lives: from W.B. Yeats to Bruce Ohatwin, ed. Alistair Home (Patermac, £12.99 in UK)

The underlying logic of this superficially odd, discrete book is that all the contributors have held the Alistair Home Fellowship at Oxford. They have written, in effect, a series of potted biographies, or at least potted biographical studies. And a disparate lot these are - how many people will bother to read about Alec Douglas-Home, Herbert Gladstone (son of the great Prime Minister), the historian Richard Cobb, or two-thirds forgotten Kim Philby? On the other hand, there are excellent pieces on Musolinni by John Whittam, on the Polish poet Mickiewicz by Norman Davies, on Field-Marshal "Wully" Robertson by Victor Bonham-Carter, on Yeats by Roy Foster. A surprise inclusion, but a worthwhile one, is Alan Davidson writing on the film actress Carlole Lombard. Some of the lesser-known personalities, too, are well worth the trouble of acquaintance.