Elizabeth Buchan's 3 favorite reads in 2023

A masterclass in fusing together biography with an analysis of Donne’s poetry and the mores of the period. I am not so good on poetry, but this completely won me over.

The writing is superb, the character of John Donne is conveyed with the minimum of effort, and the development and significance of the verse could not be bettered.

It is comparatively short, but what is packed into these pages is nothing short of astonishing – not least Katherine Rundell’s summing up of Donne’s marriage, considered one of the great love affairs to have been put into poetry. 

I am late, late to Eva Ibbotson, who died in 2010, but when I discovered her this year, I devoured the lot.

As a child, she fled the Nazis with her family from Austria, came to England, and, later, wrote prizewinning books for children. Her adult novels have recently been reissued, and, bitter-sweet but never sentimental, Madensky Square is my favourite.

Set in 1911, it’s the story of what happens in the square during the year and to Susanna Weber, a gifted dress designer. She is an observer, a friend, wry and as sharp as one of her needles, and in love with a married army officer. Above all, she is an independent woman (in an age which frowns on female independence) and possesses great resilience.

It is all woven together with the lightest of touches, a tough and acute capacity to observe, and deep affection for the characters.

What a novel. From the simple premise of a woman pinching her dead best friend’s manuscript and passing it off as her own is spun a thought-provoking and fascinating story.

It asks questions: who is empowered to tell a story? Everyone? Or only the people to whom it belongs? What is the publishing industry? Clever professionals? Or those that are led only by social media?

The novel also unpeels how complicated a lie can be, and it is compulsive, tense, and more than a little satirical.

Did one mind what happens to June, who stole what became a mega-selling manuscript? Not that much but it sure is gripping reading, watching her navigating the bumpy waters on which she set sail.