Books of the month: Self-help, short stories and sea creatures

Martin Chilton reviews December’s biggest books for our monthly column

An eclectic selection of this month’s reads (The Independent)

December is usually the quirkiest publishing month of the year. Along with the rush to stimulate Christmas sales for all the 2022 books already on the shelves, publishers also pump out copious “how to lose weight” guides, healthy-cooking books, and self-help tomes (one by Dr Lucy Maddox is reviewed below), to chime with the season of good intentions.

There were, however, two prominent exceptions scheduled for this December. The first was a biography of the recent disastrous reign of Liz Truss, by Harry Cole and James Heale, which was rushed out a month early because of her comically short term as prime minister. The second is Gyles Brandreth’s biography of the recently departed Queen. If you are looking for an obsequious read, then Elizabeth: An Intimate Portrait fits the royal bill.

Biographies of actress Elizabeth Taylor are hardly in short supply, but Kate Andersen Brower has drawn on unpublished letters, diary entries, and “off-the-record” interview transcripts for her new study, Elizabeth Taylor: The Grit and Glamour of an Icon (HarperCollins). Meanwhile, in the year of Sir Paul McCartney’s popular Glastonbury return, fans of The Beatles will be lured by The McCartney Legacy: Volume 1 1969-1973 by Allan Kozinn and Adrian Sinclair (HarperCollins).