Beards apart, Santa Claus and Eric Clapton have little in common. The bluesman's legend has wavered dramatically over the years — wife-stealing racist, or god? In The Autobiography (Century, £20/offer £18) Clapton is quick to admit that his personal relationships place him some distance from the latter, although he has a tendency to consider his addictions a disease, and puts his legendary womanising down to his tough relationship with his mother; as a confessional, it's best read in tandem with his former wife Pattie Boyd's Wonderful Today (Headline Review, £20/£18). Intriguingly he names the late Jim Gordon as the best drummer he played with — Ginger Baker may feel a little put out.

Like The X Factor, Top of the Pops was a programme that you were more likely to watch for risible moments (Brian and Michael, Orville, late-period Quo) than epiphanies. Ian Gittins' annual-format tribute Top of the Pops: Mishaps, Miming And Music (BBC, £12.99/£11.69) sniggers throughout at its camp qualities, but — as the lows easily outnumbered the highs — it works perfectly. Anecdotes abound. Diddy David Hamilton recalls how he was fired after repeatedly introducing Rod Stewart's 1976 hit The Killing of Georgie as The Killing of Georgie Fame — it turned out that his lunchtime refreshments had been spiked.

Illicit substances also get the odd mention in Ronnie Wood's Ronnie (Macmillan, £20/£18), along with tales of his home almost being engulfed in human excrement, and financial horror stories involving characters with names such as Mr Vulture. On the plus side, he managed a cameo in Adrian Lyne's film Nine Weeks. Matey and conversational, it reads as if Ron is sharing a bottle of Chivas Regal with you.

With the 40th anniversary of rock's most politically active era upon us, Domenic Priore's Riot on Sunset Strip (Jawbone £19.95/£17.95) recalls the brief period when rock replaced movies as Hollywood's main action. The scene soon shifted to San Francisco, but LA took the brunt of anti-youth police action.

Celebrity festive favourites

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

BACKGROUND

• The Times Christmas choice: fiction

• The Times Christmas choice: crime

• The Times Christmas choice: history

• The Times Christmas choice: audiobooks

BACKGROUND

• The Times Christmas choice: children aged 2-10

• The Times Christmas choice: gardening

• The Times Christmas choice: art

• The Times Christmas choice: memoirs and autobiographies

• The Times Christmas choice: graphic novels

A more international approach informs Peter Doggett's There's a Riot Going On (Canongate, £25/£22.50), with musicians such as John Lennon, James Brown and Fela Kuti drawn into the fray. Doggett follows the story with passion from Greenwich Village protest to the crushing denouement of Nixon's re-election in 1972. Essential for anyone who believes that art, sociology and politics are inextricably linked.

Storm Thorgerson's artwork for Pink Floyd may dazzle (the solarised windmill on More) and beguile (just what is on the sleeve of Obscured By Clouds?). But the accompanying text in Mind Over Matter 4: The Images Of Pink Floyd (Omnibus, £29.95/£26.95), is one drawn-out smirk: “There is a persistent rumour in some quarters on the internet, and in some back alleys of Marrakech, that the experience of listening to Pink Floyd is enhanced by the ingestion of narcotics.” You could read the whole thing out loud in Noel Edmonds's voice as a Christmas party piece.

Born in the Bronx (Universe, £25/£22.50), edited by Johan Kugelberg, is a visual record of the birth of hip-hop, when it was all about partying in the face of an apocalypse, as New York City went bankrupt; Joe Conzo's photos of the South Bronx in the late 1970s look eerily like shots of Berlin in 1945. The beautiful cut-and-paste club flyers of the period illustrate the birth of a truly DIY culture from the fabled “two turntables and a microphone”.

The early days of British rock'n'roll were much more convoluted. Pete Frame, best known for his rock family trees, paints a surprisingly lurid world in The Restless Generation (Rogan House, £18.99/£17.09). While the record companies believed Mambo music was the future, the likes of Cliff Richard and the Shadows evolved with the help of an ungodly alliance of Soho coffee-bar owners, beatniks, and desperate jazzers looking to pay the rent.

Frame explains the new music's dramatic unfolding, with Eddie Cochran and Gene Vincent inspiring kids and “going ballistic” backstage at Britain's Gaumonts and Odeons, ensuring future careers for the Claptons and Woods, Lennons and McCartneys in the aisles.

Jonathan Gould's Can't Buy Me Love (Portrait, £25/£22.50) is, hands down, the best Beatles book since Ian MacDonald's Revolution in the Head. The subject is pretty much inexhaustible if the writer is good enough, and Gould is very good. He covers the group's cultural significance (pulling out a plum of a 1963 Eric Hobsbawm quote: “In 20 years' time, nothing of them will survive”) as well as their music. Using the minor White Album track Yer Blues, Gould succinctly explains how the Beatles operated on a different level to every other British Sixties band.

Want the explanation? Get the book for Christmas.

Bestsellers 2007

1. British Hit singles and Albums edited by David Roberts
Guinness World Records, £18.99
Hardy perennial reaches its 19th edition by celebrating 1,000 No1s.

2. 1001 Albums You Must Hear Before You Die by Robert Dimery
Cassell, £20

3. Take That: Now and Then by Martin Roach
HarperCollins, £4.99

4. Heroes of Jazz, Blues and Country by Robert Crumb
Abrams, £9.99

5. Hotel California by Barney Hoskyns
HarperPerennial, £8.99

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