The Bedside Guardian 07

I approached the task of commenting on The Bedside Guardian 07 with considerable trepidation. So much, in fact, that the original deadline, which was intended to have something in the paper well in time to influence readers who might be looking for a weighty Christmas stocking filler, came and went. Of course I had excuses. Yet the truth as ever is more mundane. Frankly, this was always going to be a challenge. The Guardian publishes a book of articles that have appeared in its pages over the past year, written by its very finest. Shortly after publication it devotes several pages of G2 to the views of others on their favourite selection from the book. And then a few days later it devotes several more pages of G2 to a selection of reader's views on the articles that should have been included in the book, but weren't. After all that, what is there left to say? And what can decently be said? I left the book lying around, not too discreetly, and invited comments from anyone who happened to pick it up or inquire about it. Some wouldn't touch it, such as my children, who showed no interest whatsoever (perhaps that could be remedied with a few pages of cartoons?). More than one was irritated by what she saw as the steaming self-indulgence of the exercise. "So up their own arse," she suggested, but then she was probably a Telegraph reader. Others were much more charitable. Most of those who picked it up and dipped in would reminisce about what the year was really about for them, and how the collection did - or didn't - capture its essence, and that is surely what The Bedside Guardian is really about. Some were irritated by a year that begins in September and ends in August, others reassured by that reminder of schooldays. Most liked the chronological arrangement, as articles proceeded through the seasons. Others toyed with alternative approaches: going with themes (sport, politics, dead people, animals, and so on); or reproducing the daily Guardian's own approach (news, reviews, family); or even abandoning all pretence of structure or logic and simply throwing pieces together on a totally random basis. Sign up to our Bookmarks newsletter Read more I am content with The Bedside Guardian just the way it is: 2007 was a symmetrical sort of year. From this collection it looks as though politics and football came together in near perfect harmony, Tony Blair's departure (on a cloud of self-delusion) segueing seamlessly into the collapse of the England football team (on a cloud of self-delusion). This is, after all, a book to be dipped into, a gentle reminder of the year that was and the year that could have been, as well as the bits of the paper we like and those we don't. As a dipping-in-sort of book, of the sort that matters not where it is opened, it could perhaps do with a few shorter pieces, like the people's own obituaries, Other Lives, or the best of the corrections. On which note, next year's might well begin with a gem from September last, fabulously putting the spotlight on the need to correct an article's error in gravely misspelling Melvyn Bragg's first name. A few days later the correction itself needed correcting. "This article was amended on Wednesday September 26 2007," it said. "We misspelled the word misspelled as mispelled." That's why I love the Guardian. It won't ever let you forget what's important and what isn't. · Philippe Sands's Torture Team: Deception, Cruelty and the Compromise of Law, will be published by Allen Lane this year