With the re-emergence of the crcket season I realise again that however much I long to spend whole days at the County Ground or tele-wise at Old Trafford or the Oval, the best I can probably manage is the recorded highlights. Not the real thing, but neither would they claim to be. Larger and brighter than life they are the game's late-night shop window. Dorling Kindersley's Eyewitness Guides have the same effect on me - slick, technically great and, above all, productive of further interest. Superb photographs with touched-in shadows characterise and emphasise the realness of Eyewitness subjects, the texts fit where they touch and are individual enough to be convincingly authoritative. The books proceed spread by spread, introducing generalities and illustrating them by picturesque and copiously annotated illustrations. A picture like that of the 'exploded' lobster on pages 22-23 of Shell could hardly be bettered for explaining an articulated exoskeleton, and the apposition of a suit of armour behind the lobster's last right leg is not only natty layout but a positive information bonus - although why not choose a Cromwellian 'lobster-back' helmet, I wonder? Superficiality abounds in this series (the 'salmon' illustrated in Early People is actually an oven-ready hatchery rainbow trout), but this is a small price to pay for a series of books that provenly stimulates interest and provides delight, whether among ten-year-olds or adults. What Eyewitness Guides need, of course, are good follow-up bibliographies and this they haven't got; a pity, but this fleet seems set to sail on with a fair wind of a modest price, which could excuse the absence of a farthing's worth of tar. There is a growing demand from schools for books on 'recent history' - books which portray life during a limited time-span, or which attempt to give the flavour of a decade. Publishers have responded with a number of series, from the trendsetting Macdonald History of the Modern World of the mid-seventies to these latest offerings.