This week, I need to play catch up. Publishers don't bring out many proper books at this time of year, presumably because they fear that anything really important will get swamped in the deluge of Christmas toilet books, almanacs, quizzes and miscellanies. Some of these are good - I've lost count of the times I've picked up a 'gift book' preparing to sneer and found myself utterly absorbed - but the cumulative effect is unsteadying, like a surfeit of canapes and cocktails. So here are some fine recent 'real' books which should cleanse the palate and clear the head again.

Edward Burra: Twentieth Century Eye by Jane Stevenson. Cape £30

Burra (1905 - 1976) was a highly original artist and a marvellously funny and sharp letter-writer, whose motto was "always join the minority". This excellent biography, by the novelist Jane Stevenson, has been deservedly praised. Burra painted in watercolours - an unfashionable medium this century - and his subjects were never conventional. Tarts, sailors, strange surrealist bird-headed men, ominous landscapes, markets where the vegetables have more vigour than the people buying them: just listing the subjects makes me long for one of our national museums to drop everything and put on a proper show of his work. Not that he would approve, of course. In 1961, when the Royal Academy rang to ask if he would consider becoming an associate, he shouted downstairs to his manservant, who had picked up the telephone: "Tell them to f*** off, I'm busy."

The Strange Death of David Kelly by Norman Baker. Politico's £30

You don't need to be a conspiracy theorist to enjoy reading this, although it helps. The Lib Dem MP Norman Baker is a terrier among the poodles and curs of contemporary politics and he's sleuthed out some shocking and intriguing new aspects to the David Kelly tragedy. Our reviewer Nick Rufford - who was one of the last reporters to talk to Kelly - takes issue with some of Baker's speculations but warmly recommends the book.

John Stuart MIll: Victorian Firebrand by Richard Reeves. Atlantic £30

Mill's work, especially On Liberty and The Subjection of Women - seems more resonant and provocative than ever these days. Consider any recent political hot-potato - identity cards, faith schools, the bans on smoking and hunting. In all these cases, Mill, the great Victorian defender and definer of individual liberty, is crucial to our understanding of what is at stake. Though he is England's greatest political philosopher, it is striking that he never lent his name to any ideology. There is no such thing as Millism or Millist dogma, for he learnt from experience to test all theories against reality and encourages his disciples to do exactly the same. Richard Reeves is a first time biographer and a first-rate writer.

Pippi Longstocking by Astrid Lindgren, illustrated by Lauren Child. OUP £14.99

This classic children's tale is an absolute must-buy for anyone with children. Pippi is an awe-inspiring anarchist who makes Just William and Horrid Henry look like rank amateurs. Lauren Child's illustrations are bright and cheery, but I'm afraid they reduce her to the level of another Lauren Child Charlie-and-Lola character instead of playing up her individuality. This is fun to read aloud.

Britain's Lost Cities by Gavin Stamp. Aurum £25

Here's a coffee-table book with a difference: it will make you choke in fury. The distinguished architectural historian and campaigner, Gavin Stamp, has rootled through provincial archives to find pictures of the bulldozed architectural treasures of Exeter, Edinburgh, Glasgow, Birmingham, Manchester, Newcastle and Bristol. Don't blame the Germans for everything. We brought most of the ugliness upon ourselves in the 50s and 60s when our planners gutted the hearts of our cities to make way for "a gruesome brutalist landscape of concrete office blocks, arterial roads and characterless shopping malls".

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