The Daily Telegraph book of Obituaries, edited by Hugh Massingberd (Pan, £6.99 in UK)

Such is the callousness and cynicism of the journalistic profession that obituaries are something of a joke in the newspaper industry, with the threat of being made "obits editor" held - and only half in, jest - over the head of many a recalcitrant hack. The Telegraph's Hugh Massingberd thought otherwise; it was, he says in his introduction to this volume, a job he had "dreamed of doing for years". Now he has put together his edited highlights, and a more eccentric collection of tally ho twits and languid low lives you would be hard put to find. Like Tony, the third Lord Moynihan, bongo drummer, brothel keeper, drug smuggler, police informer and authority on rock'n'roll; or the Wali of Swat, whose name is a killer in itself; or Ian Board, the owner of the Colony Club and the oft repeated remark that "People say Soho isn't what it was. But Soho never was what it was." These people are scary. Just as well they're all dead, really.