“As you grow older you will find that good books can be some of your best friends,” wrote Charles Phillipson to his son, Michael, in 1947. Letters to Michael (Slightly Foxed, £22), bears out the truth of that fatherly counsel. Phillipson first began drawing when he was diagnosed with multiple sclerosis – and, despite his illness, never stopped writing to his son. Marvellously decorated with characterful pen-and-ink drawings, Letters to Michael is testament to a bygone era when snow fell thick, real pennies were squirrelled in plum puddings and letter-writing sketched the true contours of a relationship.
Books, of course, aren’t all peace and goodwill. They can be truculent, spiky and bracingly crotchety, too, as Quentin Letts’s Stop Bloody Bossing Me About (Constable, £16.99) cheerfully proves. The parliamentary sketch-writer takes aim at petty-minded officialdom and woke-wangling quangos in all their guises. In this quest, his spirit animal is Fenton, the ragamuffin mutt whose antics chasing red deer in Richmond Park made him a YouTube celebrity. Letts’s message? Be more Fenton.
It’s advice that could have shaped the career of the late, great comedian Victoria Wood. In Victoria Wood: Unseen on TV (Trapeze, £20), her biographer, Jasper Rees, has collected material – songs, scripts, speeches and sketches – that was left unpublished when she died in 2016. It’s no sad smorgasbord of offcuts. From a semi-autobiographical TV play written when she was still a student to the perils of swinging with your wife, via an ode to the safety pin, this is a toothsome spread from a talent cut short.
The quiet, slumberous days between Christmas and New Year were made for daydreaming. But, at a pinch, the top floor of a bus works just fine too. In No.91/92: notes on a Parisian commute (Les Fugitives, £8.99), Lauren Elkin records flashes of life in the French capital over the course of a year. Witty, lyrical and insightful, these iPhone notes build a mosaic-life portrait of a city seen in motion. Chic and slim, it will fit gracefully into your pocket.
The more ruddy-cheeked will find Susan Oglivy’s Nests (Penguin, £20) a cool, clean ruffle of winter air. Ranging across almost 30 species, it is an illustrated guide to the nests Oglivy discovered around her home. Like Tracey Emin’s bed, avian housekeeping reveals a lot about the species in question. The slovenly collared dove, for instance, can scarcely be bothered to pull together “a loose, twiggy platform”, while the wren’s tidy beehive domes are “much admired”.
