Though I have read little new fiction in 2008, I greatly enjoyed the debut novel by public relations guru (and old friend) Simon Astaire, Private Privilege (Quartet Books, £15), which supplies a thinly disguised picture of his unhappy schooldays at Harrow. If nothing else, it sets one wondering why parents waste the money . . .

Lack of formal education certainly did not hold back John Lennon (on the contrary!) whose amazing life, so cruelly cut short, is told in exhaustive, but never exhausting, detail by Philip Norman in John Lennon: The Life (HarperCollins, £25). One really can’t grudge the title's definite article, for this is surely the definitive biography, as indeed was his earlier book on all of the Fab Four. Another long and detailed portrait of a remarkable life is supplied by Julian Evans in Semi-invisible Man: The Life of Norman Lewis (Jonathan Cape, £25). Lewis (1908-2003) was a superb travel writer who deserves to be much better known. His 20 years as a spy (Ian Fleming among his controllers) lends added excitement to this fine book, as does the account of his exploits as a Bugatti-driving race-track daredevil.

Finally, the most enjoyable republication of the year was Nigel Jones’s Through a Glass Darkly (Black Spring Press, £11.95), a biography of the novelist and playwright Patrick Hamilton which first appeared in 1991. Booze-ridden and emotionally rackety, Hamilton neverthesless produced a solid body of work, including the oft-revived stage melodrama Gaslight and the novel Slaves of Solitude (set in Henley, where he lived for a period) which is surely his masterpiece.