Here are my jumbled notes on what articles stood out for me in this edition from 2008:

• An article about V. S. Pritchett's A Cab at the Door, which at the time of publication, had been recently released as a limited edition hardcover by SF. Since then it has been released as a softcover which is proudly sitting on my "British Editors" shelf.

• An article about James Munro's John Craig spy thrillers, beginning with The Man Who Sold Death made me want to discover his now little known hero. Munro is better known as James Mitchell, who was among other things the scriptwriter for The Avengers British tv series. Here is how the books and their hero are described:

"Craig is not an easy man to fathom. He is brutal to his adversaries yet kind and tender with women. He admits to being addicted to danger but dislikes killing, at which he is expert. With the kind of people he comes up against, it is invariably kill or be killed. Munro's villains are evil men, ready to slaughter any number of innocents to achieve their ends. Craig is often subjected to brutal tortures of a kind that makes one think there is something to be said for a dull, humdrum life after all."

"The theme of the innocent bystander who gets entangled in the dirty world of espionage runs through all the Craig thrillers. Among these innocents are the women who fall in love with Craig, and old war comrades whose loyalty to Craig sometimes costs them their lives. Craig's war in Greece, Sicily and Tangier was his making, freeing him from a wretched background of orphanages and foster homes. He discovered a talent for action and a knack for languages, becoming fluent in French, Italian and Greek, proficient in Arabic and German. Rather like Patrick Leigh Fermor, he was accepted by the Greeks as one of them."

• The novel of William Faulkner as seen by a British fan.

• Aunts Up the Cross by Robin Eakin, an Australian classic, which "begins and ends with the death of the author's great-aunt Juliet, aged 85 and frankly pretty eccentric if not downright mad. She was run over by a bus which was travelling slowly in the right direction while the old lady was going pretty fast in the opposite, wrong direction. Her progress was made all the more haphazard by the dark glasses which she wore throughout the year. 'Her untimely end might have been dramatic in a family more given over to quieter leave taking.' wrote her great-niece, Robin Eakin. 'But, in ours, it just seemed natural.'"

• An article on The Raymond Chandler Papers: Selected Letters and Non-Fiction, 1909-1959 made me want to seek out this book and read it asap. It features a few choice excerpts, such as this:

"This Leussler is a terrible man. He is a kind-hearted guy and would do anything for you, but he will kill you with talk in the process. We had him here to dinner and by 9.30 he had me so exhausted that I went and put my pyjamas on — a hint that would be considered too broad in the best society (if there is any) but it was just right for Leussler. Anything less pointed would have missed him by a yard and I didn't feel up to holding up a card with large letters on it saying: FOR CHIRST'S SAKE STOP TALKING AND GO HOME!"

• Dodie Smith's I Capture the Castle, described from the point of view of a writer who has always appreciated the evolution's of the heroine's efforts at becoming a writer in this book within a book (told by a young girl who is writing in her journal and whose skills evolve as time goes by) which became a favourite of mine after reading (well, listening to) it in 2012.

• My favourite article was probably the one written by a school librarian who describes how storytelling has in been know to literally make the difference between life in death, in the cases of prisoners in Siberian labour camps for example. She contrasts this with the changes which librarians were expected to make from reading out loud to group of children to the necessity in the computer age of teaching 'information skills' and of course, as can be expected, makes a darn good case why the former is essential and the latter... not so much. ( )