The Tony Years Craig Brown Ebury Press, 444pp, £14.99 ISBN 0091909694

Craig Brown is our leading exemplar of what Orwell described as "generous anger" - the ability to satirise hypocrisy and inefficiency while simultaneously recognising decency and wit. Thus, in this new collection of Brown's satirical and critical writings, such unlikely figures as Alan Clark and Tony Benn are praised even as their more outrageous sayings are taken to task.

But Brown has not mellowed with age. His humour is based on pitch-perfect parody of the pompous and the deluded, and the highly disparate likes of Harold Pinter (an easy but nevertheless deserving target), Damien Hirst and John Gielgud are mercilessly mocked in high comic style. However, it is the vitriol of his "straight" critical pieces that makes the greatest impression, as when he lambastes Christopher Meyer's memoir DC Confidential, first in parody, then in a disbelieving article entitled "Why Do I Bother?".

If one has to nit-pick, some of the political satire veers between the brilliant, as in a caustic demolition of the pointlessness of Iain Duncan Smith, and the woolly, as in a slightly half-hearted attack on David Cameron's hollow verbosity. But for hilarious, heartfelt and caustic attacks on the useless and the ephemeral, Brown cannot be bettered.

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