If there were a prize for the handsomest book of the month, this cased, pictorially end-leaved, elegantly bound, gilt-embossed, generously illustrated double-decker, finely printed on coated paper, would win. One’s fingers positively itch to turn its pages. 

It is, one is tempted to say, almost worth the wallet-shrivelling sum that OUP is charging for the two-volume package – an amount that none but bibliophiles teetering on the verge of bibliomania will happily part with. 

At some three kilos this is probably also the heaviest title of the season. When I called round at the Literary Review to pick it up some wag in the office jested that a free rupture truss ought to be included in the price.

‘Book History’ is