Lead book review
Books of the Year II – further recommended reading from our regular reviewers
Contributors include: Graham Robb, Ruth Scurr, William Dalrymple, Frances Wilson, Hilary Spurling, Jonathan Sumption, Antony Beevor and Naomi Alderman
Books of the Year I – 2026
Our regular contributors choose the books they have most enjoyed reading in 2026
A history of Napoleon’s marshals has all the dash and vigour of a cavalry charge
Andrew Roberts analyses the campaigns and battles, from Italy in 1796 to Waterloo in 1815
When botanists resembled a worldwide intelligence network
At the height of the British Empire, our plant specialists were gathering information from every climate zone and returning it neatly classified to the centre at Kew
The best of enemies: three centuries of Anglo-German relations
Jan Rüger explores the paradox of how two such closely enmeshed nations could simultaneously be such formidable foes
Warnings, omens and the end of days: the surreal times of the Emperor Charlemagne
It was an age of prophetic dreams and darkest fears, when genuine piety could happily coexist with appalling brutality
United by ambition: the ruthless rapacity of England’s two famous Cromwells
Protestant evangelicalism, avarice and the promotion of family fortunes were what chiefly characterised both ill-fated statesmen
In with the new: Julie Christie, Mary Quant, Up the Junction – the decade that changed Britain
The 18 months covered in the latest volume of David Kynaston’s magnum opus contain some of the defining moments of the whole postwar period
She lived frantically ever after: the jaw-dropping life of Barbara Cartland
Most people’s lives contain vast swathes of boredom but not Cartland’s. Every page of this biography is a cliff-hanger: pistols are forever going off, legs are amputated, proposals are made at gunpoint and suicides are two a penny
Few writers have covered their tracks as successfully as Anita Brookner
The distinguished art historian and novelist shredded as many private papers as she could, leaving her biographer the daunting task of piecing together clues from published material
The spellbinding power of the du Maurier family
Daphne du Maurier’s grandson examines his forebears’ imaginative understanding of the collective unconscious and their uncanny feel for what the public wanted
The mind-altering miracle of the novel in Britain, from A to Z
Philip Hensher reminds us of the transformative power of fiction over the centuries – from Ann Radcliffe’s Gothic experiments to Zadie Smith’s bone-deep knowledge of the form
Shagger, chancer and oath-breaker – Harold Godwinson had a touch of the Viking about him
But for all his faults he emerges from Tom Licence’s biography, like the blazon on his banner at Hastings, ‘an armed warrior woven in pure gold’
The Byzantine empire ends in an orgy of rape and slaughter
Massively outnumbered and abandoned by Christian Europe, Constantinople’s inhabitants finally succumbed to the Ottomans after a devastating 53-day siege
‘A selfish, ignoble person’ – the dark side of the Nobel prize-winner Mario Vargas Llosa
‘Why so many lies, so many deceptions, so much disloyalty?’ lamented his first wife, echoing the views of many others once close to the Peruvian novelist
Will any lone fanatic soon be capable of bioterrorism?
Building such weapons still demands resources beyond an amateur, but the margin of safety is fast eroding, warns Annie Jacobsen
Christian soldiers in retreat – the disastrous Fifth Crusade
Instead of invading Palestine, the crusaders decided to attack Egypt instead, resulting in a long, costly siege followed by encirclement and a humiliating truce in 1221
Will Cuba be reborn as a Caribbean Las Vegas?
Six decades on from Castro’s revolution, all talk is now of the Yanqui dollar and how to acquire it
A century of movie magic: how cinema has changed the way we think
David Thomson examines the industry from many different viewpoints, highlighting the remarkable influence of films on our behaviour
The tragedy of Paul Celan – trapped in his own allusive poems
By his late thirties, the great poet of the Holocaust had succumbed to clinical paranoia, in which every aspect of daily life was saturated with evil significance
French letters – Albert Camus’s great epistolary love affair
To read the 15-year correspondence between Camus and the actress Maria Casarès is to experience a vertiginous roller-coaster between transcendent joy and abject suffering
The sham shaman: the fantastic lies of Carlos Castaneda
An entirely invented memoir, supposedly relaying the wisdom of a Mexican guru, was not only a cult bestseller but was endorsed by anthropologists and even UCLA
Insufferable martinet or inspirational hero? Field Marshal Montgomery was both
An abusive childhood may help explain the contradictory character of Britain’s great second world war commander, says Gary Mead
The short, eventful life of George Forster – explorer, naturalist and revolutionary
By the time he died, aged 39, the German-Polish polymath had travelled the world, mastered ten languages, witnessed the French Revolution and campaigned tirelessly for human rights
A glimpse of the extremes of Emily Brontë’s imagination
Confined spaces as well as open ones preoccupied Emily, with dungeons and graves filling her poetry as much as the unbounded landscape of the moors
