What tickled our columnists between the covers this year?

QUENTIN LETTS

Rose Tremain’s character Robert Merivel, in the eponymous Merivel (Vintage £7.99) is a late 17th century doctor, courtier, country squire and roisterer.
Here is a hero who has his furtive and dodgy side and is all too aware of it. This sequel to Tremain’s Restoration novel is satisfying not only for its insights into the politics of Charles II’s closing years, but also because it gives you a sniff of the anxiety that surely existed in royal cronies back then (not much different from modern politics, perhaps). This agreeably sardonic novel gives off a stench of decay around Charles and the frustration of Merivel as he ages and loses his power (but not potency - boy, he’s frisky!). Along the way you get to visit Versailles, you meet a sad bear, and you encounter Merivel’s mercurial mistress, the alluring Madame de Flamanville.