BOOKS / In the lists

'My soulmate and cellmate: how can I put across his abundant love of life?' Brian Keenan's now famous tributes to John McCarthy are echoed in Den of Lions, a new book just out from Hodder & Stoughton ( pounds 9.99), by Terry Anderson, the Western hostage who endured the longest captivity of all. When, after a long separation, Anderson and McCarthy find themselves put together again, Anderson describes it as being 'like suddenly walking outside and into a fresh breeze'. Quite an accolade, under the circumstances. Anderson's terrifying seven years as a hostage contained the now familiar horrors, along with some that seem less immediately shocking at first - such as spending 18 months without being able to stand up for more than 10 minutes a day. Anderson's comment - that he'd got 'amazingly fat' - shows him to be a man in the McCarthy mould. Madeleine, the pregnant fiancee he left behind when he was captured in 1985, contributes her own chapters, making this a counterpart to John 'n' Jill's double testimony, which is newly out in paperback, and, not surprisingly, at No 1.