Books of the year: P D James, Penelope Lively, Philip Pullman and others

Independent writers and some special guests choose their books of 2001. Peter Carey's Ned Kelly comes out with all guns blazing, and Helen Dunmore's besieged Russians triumph over adversity. But there are surprising favourites, too: from the Chinese writer Dai Sijie's fable of the Cultural Revolution to graphic artist Chris Ware's novel-without-words

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Part 2: with Boyd Tonkin, John Walsh, Marina Warner and others

Part 3: with Margaret Drabble, Geoff Dyer, Michael Arditti and others

P D James, novelist

In a good year for biography I welcome Iris Murdoch: a life by Peter J Conradi (Harper Collins), an illuminating if over-detailed life of one of the 20th century's literary icons. Ian McEwan, that master of the brilliant first chapter, did not subsequently disappoint with Atonement (Cape), his best novel. I received great pleasure from two sensitive explorers of the human heart whose new novels have had insufficient notice: Nina Bawden's The Ruffian on the Stair (Virago) and Pat Barker's Border Crossing (Viking). Jan Morris's Trieste and the Meaning of Nowhere (Faber) isn't a travel book but a poignant and enchanting evocation of a life, inspired by a beautifully written meditation on a unique city. A gem.

Elaine Feinstein, poet, biographer and novelist

One of the most intriguing books this year was Randal Keynes's Annie's Box (Fourth Estate), which begins with the contents of a child's writing-case and leads on to explore the effects on Charles Darwin's personal life of his child's early death and his wife's resistance to the metaphysical implications of his theory of evolution. I also relished Dannie Abse's Goodbye to the 20th Century (Pimlico) for its self-deprecating humour and the rarity of a poet finding his bearings with such decency and compassion. I found Helen Dunmore's The Siege (Viking) an admirable novel, both sensuously alert and touchingly open to the suffering and starvation of ordinary people. Then, as winter closed in, I read Emma Tennant's A House in Corfu (Cape) and enjoyed the scents of lemon trees and rosemary rising in the sunshine of Odysseus's coastline.

Sarah Bradford, biographer

Usually, I find myself catching up on books I should have read a year ago – Matthew Kneale's English Passengers (Penguin), one of the funniest and most ingenious novels for years, and Lorna Sage's Bad Blood (Fourth Estate), a minor work of art. Of recent biographies I enjoyed Judith Flanders's A Circle Of Sisters (Viking), the intricately woven, beautifully written tracing of the lives of four Victorian sisters. Three well-known figures were illuminated for me by the particular skills of their biographers: Antonia Fraser's Marie Antoinette (Weidenfeld & Nicolson) is unputdownable, empathetic and moving, while Andrew Roberts's original approach to Napoleon and Wellington (Weidenfeld & Nicolson) provides a brilliant reappraisal of the egotistical pair.

Julia Neuberger, chief executive, the King's Fund

I could not put down Kevin Myers's first novel, Banks of Green Willow (Scribner), about Ireland, Bosnia, war, love and shifting concepts of identity. Equally impossible to put down was the profoundly moving story of human goodness, Nicholas Winton and the Rescued Generation (Vallentine Mitchell), by Muriel Emanuel and Vera Gissing. Nicholas Winton, now in his nineties, rescued nearly 700 children, mainly Jewish, from Prague just as war was about to break out. Last, the former BBC chairman Marmaduke Hussey's memoir, Chance Governs All (Macmillan), is a great read. I alternated between tears over his wartime courage and lifetime of pain from his injury and howls of laughter at his lack of respect for grandeur. Not to be missed.

Mary Flanagan, novelist

Jonathan Coe's The Rotters Club (Viking) is a witty and affecting take on 1970s Britain. The twisted naïveté of adolescence is perfectly caught by this most original writer. Thank goodness there's a sequel. With The Hunter (Faber), Julia Leigh has produced a Tasmanian Heart of Darkness. Although a first novel, it is bold and convincing with an ending to make you question your sanity. Tate Modern's catalogue for last summer's Arte Povera show is an immaculate production that pays an overdue tribute to this influential group of Italian artists. The Enclosed Garden (010 Publishers), Rob Aken and Saskia de Wit's fascinating study of the Hortus Conclusus, suggests how its principles might be applied to rejuvenate our cities and our psyches.

Paul Bailey, novelist and biographer

I would like to mention two wonderful novels: My Name Is Red by the endlessly inventive Orhan Pamuk (Faber) and Journey By Moonlight by Antal Szerb (Pushkin Press), a genius who died in 1945 at a woefully early age. The translations, from the Turkish and Hungarian by Erdag Goknar and Len Rix, respectively, are obvious labours of love. My greatest delight, if that's the right word, was in rediscovering the novellas of Georges Simenon. These incomparable studies of the vagaries of the human heart are currently unavailable in English, for all sorts of dire reasons to do with marketing. He may be the poor man's Balzac, but that in itself is quite an honour.

Jane Jakeman, crime writer and art historian

Best British crime fiction: Stephen Booth's Dancing with the Virgins (HarperCollins), a tense, strongly built version of traditional mystery, set in the Peak District, where investigation of murder inside an ancient stone circle uncovers fear and brutality. It gains immense power from the overshadowing sense of a larger death: that of British hill-farming. Best first book: Giles Blunt's Forty Words for Sorrow (HarperCollins). In the frozen Canadian north, a loner detective tries to outguess a sadistic killer. Tremendous atmosphere and psychology. Best surprise: James Wilson, The Dark Clue (Faber). Characters from Wilkie Collins's The Woman in White investigate the mysterious life of J M W Turner in a loving recreation of the Victorian suspense novel – a great big plum for the Christmas pudding.

Jane Gardam, novelist

The most extraordinary biography of the year was Gaudi by Gijs van Hensbergen (HarperCollins), about the lunatic, genius and possible saint who is "the most famous architect in the world". Also excellent: Ted Hughes: the life of a poet by Elaine Feinstein (Weidenfeld & Nicolson). Sylvia Townsend Warner's uncollected short stories, the recently discovered Music In Long Verney (Little, Brown) are a treasure trove. The Visitor by Maeve Brennan (Atlantic Books) is a wonderful short novel by an almost forgotten writer who, like Townsend Warner, worked for The New Yorker. An accolade should go to Chatto & Windus for publishing Characters of Fitzrovia by Mike Pentelow and Marsha Rowe (Chatto & Windus) – a beautifully produced, informative, enthusiastic book about a small patch of unlovely central London, nothing at all to do with the global market. A book I long to read is In Ruins by Christopher Woodward (Chatto & Windus) about flowers growing there – and much, much more.

Ben Pimlott, historian and biographer

Nicholas Henderson's The Private Office Revisited (Profile) provides fascinating keyhole glimpses of the world of high diplomacy since the days of Anthony Eden, and of "the ceaseless longing of politicians for reassurance and devotion": a theme with a certain topical resonance. It also contains an account that accords precisely with my memory of the 1965 Oxford Union Vietnam Teach-In at which Michael Stewart, the unlikely pro-American Labour Foreign Secretary, famously mowed down an audience of student anti-warriors with a machine-gun burst of facts and numbers. He was wrong and we were right, but I have always admired the performance. Rodney Barker's Legitimating Identities: the self-presentation of rulers and subjects (Cambridge) is a stylish and topical reminder of politicians' yearning for identities to bolster their authority. Like Narcissus staring into the pool, they see (or hope to see) a reflection of themselves they can fall in love with.

Penelope Lively, novelist

I dearly like an essay – not a publishing priority, so a collection of lectures nicely fills the gap. James Fenton's The Strength of Poetry (Oxford) combines elegant discussion with maverick opinion and frequent injections of wit and wisdom. I picked the book up for a brief revisit – or so I thought – before writing this and was still reading 50 minutes later, with not a word written. So there you are. Ian McEwan's Atonement (Cape) seems to me a kind of fictional perfection. The control is breathtaking – of pace, of narrative, of atmosphere. When I finished it I felt deprived. I envy anyone who has not yet read it.

Philip Pullman, children's novelist

One of the most dismaying things about New Labour is its attitude to the arts and its shrinking from anything it thinks might appeal only to an "elite". Now comes a magnificent rebuttal of that craven attitude: Jonathan Rose's The Intellectual Life of the British Working Class (Yale University Press), which demonstrates the profound engagement that working people have been glad to have, when given the chance, with the best that art and liter-ature can offer. Chris Ware's Jimmy Corrigan, the Smartest Kid on Earth (Cape) finally does what I always knew comics would do, and gets away from superheroes to give us a true and moving account of a small, unhappy life. And it's beautiful.

Alan Judd, Novelist

Kevin Myers is best known for his incisive columns in The Irish Times and The Sunday Telegraph. Turning to fiction in Banks of Green Willow (Scribner), he draws, for his modern tale of love and destiny, on Northern Ireland and Bosnia, settings that resemble the Fates in determining the lives of his characters. Such interaction of the intimately personal with the vast impersonal is never easy to dramatise, but Myers achieves it with deft, economical writing. The main characters – the Irish Gina and the Irish/Bosnian Stefan – are emo-tionally and politically believable, while the casual horror of what happens around them is sparely and effectively evoked. Although there is no ducking doom, it isn't all gloom; and the book is a compelling read.

Beryl Bainbridge, novelist

So many good books this year that it requires a list to name them all. First, A Life of David Garrick by Jean Benedetti (Methuen), Derwent May's history of the TLS, Critical Times (HarperCollins), East End 1888 by William Fishman (Hanbury), and Peter Ackroyd's London (Penguin). All four are of immense interest to those who prefer the past to the present. Of novels, I recommend Death in Holy Orders by P D James (Faber), True History of the Kelly Gang (Faber), Peter Carey's worthy winner of the Booker prize, Sister Crazy by Emma Richler (Flamingo), J K Huysmans Là-bas, translated by Brendan King (Penguin), Jeremy Trafford's Ophelia (House of Stratus) and Sandi Toksvig's Whistling for the Elephants (Black Swan), the last four not likely to reach bestseller status but hugely rewarding.

Sebastian Faulks, novelist

The book I enjoyed most was The Collected Stories of the late American writer Richard Yates, which are about to be published by Methuen. I had never heard of Yates before, but I don't know why, because he is a master of the form. Each story has weight and poise – and many are deeply affecting.

Frank McLynn, historian and biographer

Heavyweight volumes that impressed me included Cherry: the life of Apsley Cherry-Garrard by Sara Wheeler (Cape); the War Diaries of Field Marshal Lord Alanbrooke, 1939-45 (Weidenfeld); Culloden and the Last Clansman by James Hunter (Main-stream) and Henry VIII: King and Court by Alison Weir (Cape). One needs lighter moments, and they are delightfully filled by the Diaries of Kenneth Tynan, ed John Lahr (Bloomsbury); Robert Mitchum by Server Lee (Faber); Stan and Ollie by Simon Louvish (Faber & Faber), and Gary Cooper by Jeffrey Meyers (Robert Hale).

Shusha Guppy, writer

Of the books I particularly enjoyed, several came from Paris, or were about it. Andreï Makine's Requiem for the East (Sceptre) surpasses his Le Testament Français in depicting through the life of its hero Russia's tragic history. Amin Malouf's On Identity (Harvill), winner of this year's Scott Moncrieff translation prize, explores the problems and dangers of the search for identity. Philip Mansel's Paris Between Empires 1814-1852 (John Murray) conjures the city at the time when it was the centre of the civilised world and a magnet for artists and intellectuals, from Marx to Rossini. Anthony Gottlieb's The Dream of Reason (Penguin) tells the history of Western philosophy with clarity and humour. Hanan al-Shaykh's Only in London (Bloomsbury) is a funny, tender, erotic tale of love and loss among the Arab diaspora in London. Beryl Bainbridge's According to Queeney (Little, Brown) dazzles by her usual originality and imaginative power. For sheer self-indulgent delight I re-read Patrick Leigh-Fermor's Mani (Penguin), the account of his travels through southern Greece – wonderful!

J G Ballard, novelist

Interrogations: the Nazi elite in Allied hands, 1945 by Richard Overy (Allen Lane): these conversations with Hitler's chief lieutenants throw an eerie light on the psychology of fanaticism. Recorded in the run-up to the Nuremberg Trials, they show responsibility for the appalling crimes committed during the Third Reich. Yet, as Overy points out, a high number of the Nazi elite committed suicide. Once the dream had failed and the lights came on, they had nowhere to hide.