Paperbacks: Tobias Smollett<br/>The Point of Departure<br/>The Northern Renaissance<br/>Adventures of a Suburban Boy<br/>National Service<br/>Emergency Kit<br/>Soldiers of Salamis

Lewis's profoundly relishable biography has its origins in his dreary teenage years, when he "sought refuge in the 18th century".

Tobias Smollett by Jeremy Lewis (PIMLICO £8.99 (316pp))

Lewis's profoundly relishable biography has its origins in his dreary teenage years, when he "sought refuge in the 18th century". He pined for a world populated by "beaming, rubicund yokels, worldly clerics in rusty black, bottle-nosed hunting squires, sea dogs with wooden legs, lisping macaronis, lusty wenches..." and found them in the rackety novels of Smollett (1721-71). A waspish, contradictory Scot, variously physician, literary editor and jailbird, Smollett lived a life as action-packed as his fictions. After a brief spell in London (Lewis provides plenty of his beloved period detail: "raw sewage, dead dogs, rotting vegetables"), Smollett found work as a ship's surgeon, where his experiences provided rich material for his novels. After a stuttering period as a playwright, when he crossed swords with Garrick, he found his métier as a novelist, though he relied on hack-work for a living. Lewis is particularly good on the prejudices he encountered as a Scotsman. In his own recognition, Smollett suffered from "a warm temper easily provoked to rashness". Eventually his eruptions resulted in incarceration for criminal libel. Yet Smollett provides tremendous fun for the reader. Lewis describes Travels Through France and Italy as "a curmudgeonly masterpiece, replete with bedbugs". CH

The Point of Departure by Robin Cook (POCKET BOOKS £7.99 (399pp))

Robin Cook's diaries offer a devastating critique of the government's role in the Iraq war. He concedes that Blair deserves credit for pushing Bush into seeking support from the UN, but observes "this has no merit unless the US and UK governments were willing to abide by the result". Cook identifies the reason Blair cannot be honest about the war ("He did it to keep on the right side of Washington") and remains deeply troubled by Labour's continued refusal to admit error. Yet he wants Blair to remain as leader. Does he think that the rest of the country agrees? CH

The Northern Renaissance by Jeffrey Chipps Smith (PHAIDON £14.95 (448pp))

In his brilliant, comprehensive survey of the flowering of art in northern Europe in 1380-1580, Smith argues that the Northern Renaissance was distinctive because its "curiosity about the individual and the natural world was valued more than a renewed dialogue with antiquity". This humanism emerges in works ranging from Gerard David's study of the Christ child being fed milk soup by Mary to Grunwald's harrowing Crucifixion, intended to be viewed by similarly tormented sufferers from ergotism. As one nun asserted: "It is not enough to play with the baby Jesus, you must stand with him under the cross." CH

Adventures of a Suburban Boy by John Boorman (FABER £8.99 (314pp))

Growing up in suburbia, Boorman describes the war as "wonderful... It gave us the essential thing we lacked... a myth." Boorman's career has been devoted to cinematic myths. This thoughtful, lively book offers insights into the creation of these visions, from Deliverance (Jon Voight claims Boorman did his best to kill him) and the flawed Zardoz (Sean Connery tried to strangle a clapperboy) to the Wagnerian Excalibur (given "awkward tension" by Nicol Williamson's fruitless off-set passion for Helen Mirren). A born storyteller, he is a giant among film-makers. CH

National Service by Richard Eyre (BLOOMSBURY £8.99 (438pp))

Eyre's decade as director of the National Theatre was notably successful, yet this rushed, bitty diary gives scant insight into his creative intelligence. The entries tend to be either obvious (Dirk Bogarde is "quite tart and quite self-analytical") or reactionary. An attack on the NT by Julian Mitchell prompts him to muse: "I turned down his last play... Should I have pretended to like it more than I did?" Even when Eyre is profoundly moved, we learn next to nothing: "I was overwhelmed by the power of John Gabriel Borkman... I found it impossible to talk coherently." Still, thesps seem to like it. These snippets won the 2003 Theatre Book Prize. CH

Emergency Kit edited by Jo Shapcott and Matthew Sweeney (FABER £9.99 (306pp))

In this anthology, first published in 1996, poets Jo Shapcott and Matthew Sweeney have brought together poems for the "strange times" we live in, an age when "men walk on the moon" and we "talk to each other across space and time". The resulting selection is indeed strange and weirdly compelling. Alongside the usual suspects (Frost, Lowell, Larkin, Bishop etc) you'll find hundreds of poems on subjects ranging from being a wife to wearing shorts and sexual desire: "O little one, this longing is the pits". A gem. CP

Soldiers of Salamis by Javier Cercas (BLOOMSBURY £6.99 (213pp))

The winner of this year's Independent Foreign Fiction Prize, Javier Cercas's wise, funny and moving novel tells of war, memory and the aftermath of tragic conflict in legend and history. His narrator explores a strange tale from Spain's Civil War, when a Republican soldier spared the life of a vain Francoist intellectual. Profound yet playful, the novel (in Anne McLean's superb translation) moves from near-farce to epic to a great, tragi-comic finale. BT