Marcel Proust A biography, by George D. Painter (Pimlico, £15 in UK)

Now over thirty years old, Painter's biography seems to have outlasted all competitors and remains ultra readable as well as authoritative. Proust led an essentially sedentary, invalid's existence and it needed considerable insight and sympathy to bring him fully to life, but this is a genuine labour of love. Social charm and tact, an ultra sensitive intelligence, and a virtual genius for friendship, were the mainstays of his slightly enigmatic character, and he was liked and even accepted by the very exclusive social world which he anatomised. This edition is a revised and enlarged one.