My year in books I realise, as I started to compile my list of books that I most enjoyed reading this year, that a good sixty five per cent of my reading output is given to old books, mostly out of print, mostly written and set in the Thirties or Forties. Some of it is research as I’ve taken my passion for that period and started writing about it, but it’s also because I was obviously born a good seventy years too late. Anyhow I did manage to read some new releases and these are the ones that I loved above all other. Man at the Helm by Nina Stibbe I adored Nina Stibbe’s memoir of her time as a nanny in 1980′s literary LondonLove, Nina: Despatches from Family Lifeso I couldn’t wait to read her first novel. Set in the 70′s, Man At The Helm is a funny but heartbreaking account of her parent’s divorce told through the eyes of nine year old Lizzie. Her mother and her two siblings move to a village and her mother, entirely incapable of fending for herself, ricochets from one unsuitable lover to another, though the children are convinced that everything will be all right once there’s ...