Alan Bates was an admired actor, but according to Donald Spoto in his biography, Otherwise Engaged (Hutchinson, £18.99/offer £17.09), he had two problems: relationships and cakes. Felicity Kendal put it best: “His attitude to romantic entanglements was just like his attitude to desserts — ‘I really shouldn't, but I'll just have one more'.”

Bates ended up diabetic and partnerless, a gay man with a disastrous marriage behind him who often contemplated repeating the mistake. In some respects it was a car crash of a life. Spoto is our voyeur, and although his comments on the films and plays are not that useful, he can turn a life into a page-turner.

State of the Nation (Faber, £25/£22.50) by the Guardian critic Michael Billington is about how theatre reflected and shaped political change in the postwar period. He is clearly the man for the job, having cheerfully sat through didactic political dramas that would leave most begging for mercy. Despite a tendency to take unnecessary potshots at targets such as the Royal Family, much of Billington's survey is gripping. He is especially good at looking behind the usual suspects (Waiting for Godot, Look Back in Anger) to find plays that people liked and made money — however bad they now seem.

Most years are bad ones for Orson Welles, with one or another starry writer (David Thomson and Peter Conrad in recent years) jetting into Welles-land just long enough to desecrate a few monuments and burn the national flag. But Jonathan Rosenbaum is a naturalised Wellesian, and probably the most insightful and fair-minded commentator on Welles matters at present writing. Discovering Orson Welles (University of California Press, £15.95/£14.35) spans 34 years of investigation. Anyone interested in the man should get hold of it.

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Britain's best-loved personalities tell the Times what they will be reading at Christmas

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• The Times Christmas choice: fiction

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Another venerable legend is celebrated in Dietrich Icon (Duke University Press, £13.99/£15.29). The multiple authors lean heavily on academic language, and one must put up with a lot of “negotiating of space” and “distanciation”. But some contributors say what they have to say in normal language, and Gaylyn Studlar's essay is particularly valuable on the ways that Marlene Dietrich's mentor, Josef von Sternberg, contrived innuendo and allusion to get her hyper-sexualised image past the 1930s censors.

Taschen has published two picture books that may lure the Christmas shopper. Cinema Now (£24.99/ £22.49) collects mini-biographies and film stills from 60 of today's filmmakers. People will quibble with the selection (I certainly did), but the pictures are big, bold and striking and a DVD includes trailers and useful “making-of” documentaries. Movies of the 20s (£24.99/£22.29) has no DVD and many of the films lovingly detailed can't be had on DVD for love, money or anything else. But like the other books in this series, it is a masterpiece of picture research and attractive design, reviving a host of movies from an underexplored decade.

David Mamet has just turned 60, but on the evidence of Bambi vs Godzilla (Simon & Schuster, £11.99/ £10.79) he isn't easing up. His subtitle is deceptively innocent: On the Nature, Purpose, and Practice of the Movie Business. After one sentence you realise that he thinks most modern movies stink. And as for producers...

His own recipe boils down to “what does the hero want, what prevents him from getting it?” which derives from Aristotle and is exemplified in numerous films that Mamet adores. What we get nowadays, he convincingly argues, is not so much dramatic plot as an ordering of stunts or effects. He is agreeably sharp-tongued and his far-reaching analysis probes the heart of modern society.

Finally, a stocking filler for the larger-footed, the chunky Ten Bad Dates with De Niro (Faber, £12.99/£11.79). As the dinner party has proved, there are bores, film bores and — destined for the final circle of Hell — film bores who compile lists. This book gets film writers and celebrities to compile silly lists: “The Ten Worst Wigs an Actor Dared to Wear”, “Ten Dodgy Robots”, “Ten Great Films I Haven't Seen”. It's amusing and should painlessly pass the hours before Christmas lunch.

Bestsellers 2007

1. The Star Wars Vault: Thirty Years of Treasures from the Lucasfilm Archives, by Stephen J. Sansweet
Simon & Schuster, £40
Unseen photographs, letters and audio for fans of the blockbusters.

2. The Making of Star Wars, by J.W. Rinzler
Ebury, £39.99

3. Halliwell's Film, Video and DVD Guide 2007, by Leslie Halliwell and John Walker
Harper, £22.99

4. 1001 Movies You Must See Before You Die, edited by Steven Jay Schneider
Cassell, £20

5. Contacts 2007: Stage, Television, Film and Radio, edited by Kate Poynton
Spotlight, £11.50

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