The war is almost over, the Russians are getting nearer and two young men join the SS. A bad career move, but To Die in Spring is a wonderful, precise, very moving novel by German author Ralf Rothmann (Picador, translated by Shaun Whiteside). Anything Is Possible (Viking) is predictably great because it’s written by Elizabeth Strout, and brilliantly unpredictable – because it’s written by Elizabeth Strout. I like most of the books I read but, now and again, I read one I wish I’d written myself. This year it’s Reservoir 13 (4th Estate), by Jon McGregor. Its structure, pace, detail, tone, humanity – it’s a quiet masterpiece. Jennifer Egan

Tim Adams’s best biographies of 2017 | Biography books | The

Brown takes the fantasy a stage further by imagining how married life would have worked out for Pablo and Margaret. This is one of a series of counterfactual episodes spattered through the book: what if she had married Peter Townsend after all, what if she had married Jeremy Thorpe, another improbable contender for her hand, what if she had become queen instead of her sister? These capriccios melt beautifully into the text, because we are immersed in a land of dreams. Being a communist or a homosexual is no barrier here to imagining yourself walking up the aisle of Westminster Abbey with the royal trumpeters at full blast. A cross between biography and satire that perfectly displays Brown’s rare skills as journalist and parodist’, Mark Lawson, Guardian, Books of the Year - From left to right: Princess Margaret on her 26th birthday in 1956; at a film premiere in 1951; with the Queen Mother in 1951. Would I recommend to Jen (smart, discerning reader)? 5. I feel that this is the one book I know Jen would love. On learning of the affair, Sir Alan ‘Tommy’ Lascelles, private secretary to the new queen, told Townsend: ‘you must be either mad or bad.’ Within a month, he had persuaded Churchill to exile Townsend to Brussels as air attaché, without even giving him time to say goodbye. I once met Lascelles when I was at school, and was startled by his explosion of venom against the Duke of Windsor, whose private secretary he had been before the war. He was memorably unpleasant. The hope was that the separation would cool their love. But on his return two years later, Townsend said that ‘our feelings for one another had not changed.’ By now, Margaret was 25, and was free under the Royal Marriages Act to marry without the queen’s consent. It was time for the establishment to bring up the big guns. On 1 October 1955, Anthony Eden informed the princess that the cabinet had agreed that if she went ahead with the marriage, she would have to renounce her royal rights and her income from the Civil List. In deploying this threat, the government could scarcely be said to be responding to popular hostility to the match. Gallup found that 59 per cent approved of it and only 17 per cent disapproved. So was it the Church of England’s influence? Archbishop Geoffrey Fisher, a famous thrasher in his days as headmaster of Repton, was interviewed on TV by Richard Dimbleby on 2 November, two days after the announcement that the marriage would not happen. Fisher maintained that the decision had been the princess’s alone and that ‘there was no pressure from Church or State.’ This was a barefaced lie. We have seen the blunt financial threat from Eden. True, on her meeting with Fisher on 27 October, the princess did indeed say that she had come not to seek his guidance but to tell him of her decision. But at an earlier dinner with him, on 19 October, he had earnestly counselled her to call it off. There was also an extraordinary leader in the Times on 26 October, which has all the portentous fingerprints of the editor, Sir William Haley.Accents might be seen as the failure of speech to match some imaginary norm. What’s odd in Glasgow seems ordinary in Essex, and vice versa; and what was ordinary yesterday seems extraordinary now. In Ma’am Darling, Craig Brown’s recently published (and very entertaining) biographical study of Princess Margaret, the author devotes a chapter to the princess’s stilted encounter in 1981 with Roy Plomley on Desert Island Discs. “Ma’am, have you a big collection of records?” the presenter begins reverentially. “Ears, quate,” says the princess. “Have you kept your old 78s?” Plomley ploughs on. “Oh, ears,” the princess replies, “they’re all velly carefully preserved.” We go through the Beatles success in America; through pivotal moments, fan letters and memories of those who witnessed the madness of the first American tour. Inane press conferences, fires on planes. Their relationship with the Stones, meeting Elvis, and even the views of the literary establishment, are analysed. As are those around the Beatles, such as Aunt Mimi. Again, we have the interesting take of memories from those who were there and modern, idealised versions. Such as Cynthia Lennon’s, and others, memories of Mimi, compared to fans comments on YouTube; drifting off to famous aunt’s in literature.

Ma’am Darling: : The hilarious, bestselling royal biography Ma’am Darling: : The hilarious, bestselling royal biography

As for the archbishop, he managed to radiate adamantine certainty. In fact the Church’s position on divorce and remarriage was under extreme pressure. The Church of England had landed itself with the sternest prohibitions of any church, having shunned the Catholic let-out of annulment at a price. But what scriptural authority could these rules claim? Yes, Jesus had said that ‘those whom God hath joined together, let no man put asunder.’ But what about those who had sundered? How was the Church to apply its message of compassion to them? H E Bates - Fair Stood the Wind for France, The Darling Buds of May, The Dreaming Suburb, The Avenue Goes to WarAt first nights, she seldom fails to tell the producer or director how much she loathed the show. To Robert Evans, producer of Love Story, at the Royal Command Performance of the film: ‘Tony saw Love Story in New York. Hated it.’ When Dennis Main Wilson says, ‘Ma’am, I have the honour to produce a little show called Till Death Us Do Part,’ she cuts down his faux modesty with: ‘Isn’t that that frightfully dreary thing in the East End?’ At the end of Carousel at the National Theatre, Richard Eyre escorts her to the door: ‘I’m glad you enjoyed the show.’‘I didn’t, I can’t bear the piece.’ Did I enjoy the topic? 5. Jen made me into an amateur Beatle cognoscenti. This book has so many fabulous insights, details and opinions. Peter Kemp in The Sunday Times is a rare negative voice when he writes that it is “more a phenomenon of amassed information and tireless enthusiasm than triumphant creativity”. More typical is the critic Stephanie Merritt’s judgment that “ The Mirror and the Light is a masterpiece”, and she goes on to praise the trilogy as “the greatest English novels of this century”. The events Mantel depicts are well-known, but the flair and brilliance of her writing make this finale more Bourne Ultimatum than Return of the Jedi. Princess Margaret meets Frankie Howerd and Petula Clark at the London Palladium in November 1968. Photograph: Gamma-Keystone via Getty Images Her older sister may start her day off with cornflakes in Tupperware, but Princess Margaret? Her routine was a little more . . . indulgent, to say the least.