The Shape of a Pocket by John Berger (Bloomsbury, £16.99)

Of all of Britain's most venerable radicals, John Berger is surely the quietest.

The man who revolutionised a generation's view of the visual with Ways of Seeing and who donated his prize money for winning the Booker Prize with his novel, G, to the Black Panthers, keeps a grandfatherly peace about his person and his prose - without once surrendering an inch of righteousness.

After novels set in the rural community of France where he himself now lives and farms, the 75-year-old returns to the theme of the visual with his latest collection of essays, The Shape of the Pocket.

Defiant protests

Amid the noise, haste and visual clamour of the modern world, Berger's meditations on artists from Rembrandt to current Tate Modern resident Juan Munoz are in themselves defiant protests.

Rather than succumbing to the widening gyre of what Paul Morley once called our "host modern" society, Berger insists that quiet contemplation, reading and conversation are at the root of authentic resistance to the modern world.

It's not a collection that's likely to generate much media brouhaha, but then of course that's half the point. It is, however, very good.