It is rare to recommend a book that makes one’s flesh creep but this is what I find myself doing in the case of Daniel Trilling’s forensic account of the political slugs who have crawled from under their stones in — as his sub-title puts it — The Rise of Britain’s Far Right.

Patrick Tyler’s "Fortress Israel" falls into what we, in war studies, call “civil-military relations”: it is the same subject in which I completed my PhD in 1994. My overall conclusion was very similar to Tyler’s, namely that the military in Israel is overwhelmingly influential and belligerent, often pushing for action.

The cover of this novel proclaims it is Israeli espionage in the tradition of John le Carré. This is more than publisher’s hype. Sarid does, like the great British spy writer, portray secret-service work as grubby and mundane interspersed with moments of violence, a world where the prevailing morality is grey. Most of all, it shares le Carré’s great theme of betrayal.

British military historians are in the vanguard of a genre that has been given new life. Today, it is as much about the routine experience of servicemen and women as it is about strategy and tactics. Nazi ideology and the fate of the Jews is integrated into the narrative and informs analysis of decisions made at the highest to the lowest levels.

Joachim Fest was a renowned German historian and publisher of the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung newspaper, who wrote award-winning biographies of Hitler and Albert Speer. Born in Berlin in 1926, he died in 2006 and had the perfect ringside seat to chronicle the rise of Nazism.

I was a volunteer during the Six-Day War. Although the kibbutz where I worked was in the north, the spell of reunified Jerusalem frequently drew me back. In those days, I smoked a pipe. While walking through the Old City, Palestinian merchants outside their stalls would call me over to try my pipe in exchange for their hookahs.

As ever, with Edwina Currie’s writing, this is an easy read. She’s funny, and she doesn’t change what she wrote in her diary at the time except to edit for length.

Christopher Hitchens, who died in 2011, was one of the most admired — and loathed — writers of his generation. The best of his writing, notably as an essayist and contributor to Vanity Fair and The Atlantic burns with passion and integrity.

Literary editors are much envied by their fellow journalists. The latter take it for granted that we are as louche as the literati whose company we keep, leading leisurely lives in which long lunches and love affairs loom large.