Another year passes and another list of my favourite books from the past twelve months. I didn’t have quite as many five-star reads as normal, either from the 150 books I read. First up are some honourable mentions that I gave 4.5 stars to:
The Flitting – Ben Masters
Slow Trains To Istanbul – Tom Chesshyre
Panoramas of Lost London: Work, Wealth, Poverty & Change – Philip Davies
Venice Sketchbook: Impressions, Seasons, Encounters & Pigeons – Huck Scarry
Renaturing: Small Ways To Wild The World – James Canton
Normally Weird And Weirdly Normal: My Adventures In Neurodiversity – Robin Ince
Of Thorn & Briar: A Year With The West Country Hedgelayer – Paul Lamb
How to Lose a Country: The Seven Warning Signs of Rising Populism – Ece Temelkuran
Under A Metal Sky: A Journey Through Minerals, Greed and Wonder – Philip Marsden
The Laundromat: Inside the Panama Papers Investigation of Illicit Money Networks and the Global Elite – Jake Bernstein
Dilbert 2.0 – Scott Adams
Upon A White Horse: Journeys In Ancient Britain And Ireland – Peter Ross
Cage of Souls – Adrian Tchaikovsky
And here are my eleven five-star reads.
A Quiet Evening – Norman Lewis
Collected here, from a period of nearly five decades, are thirty-six of Norman Lewis s best articles. In each, his writing crackles with poker-faced wit and stylistic brilliance. As a witness to his times the good, the bad and the absurd he was unmatched, and his instinct for important events, and moments, was infallible. His range here includes Ibizan fishermen, an interview with Castro’s executioner, the genocide of the South American Indian tribes, a paean to Seville and his meeting with a tragic Ernest Hemingway. That meeting was a shattering experience, Norman wrote to Ian Fleming who had commissioned him, of the kind likely to sabotage ambition. Fortunately it didn’t, and the articles assembled between these covers are compulsive, hilarious, tender and beautifully written, at times deeply upsetting and always unforgettable.
On the Narrow Road to the Deep North: Journey into a Lost Japan – Lesley Chan Downer
After eight years working in Japan, immersing herself in its language and literature, Lesley Chan Downer set off in the footsteps of Matsuo Basho, Japan’s most cherished poet, to explore the country’s remote northern provinces. Basho’s pilgrimage to find the landscapes that had inspired the great medieval poets gave birth to Japan’s most famous travel book, rich in strange imagery and sometimes comic encounters along the road. In this intriguing cross-threading of journeys, perceptions and exquisite haiku, Lesley creates her own funny, loving and honest portrayal of contemporary Japan. As she walks, she finds at one and the same time a drab, post-industrial landscape of concrete and cables, but also a land still full of the old enchantments. Nights in thatched highland villages and saké-drenched poetry sessions encourage her to see for herself if any of the legendary hermit-priests still survive in the sacred mountains of the north.
London Made Us: A Memoir Of A Shape-Shifting City – Robert Elms
‘London is a giant kaleidoscope, which is forever turning. Take your eye off it for more than a moment and you’re lost.’
Robert Elms has seen London change beyond all imagining: the house he grew up in is now the behemoth that is the Westway flyover, and areas once deemed murder miles have morphed into the stuff of estate agents’ dreams, seemingly in a matter of months.
Elms takes us back through time and place to myriad Londons. He is our guide through a place that has seen scientific experiments conducted in subterranean lairs, a small community declare itself an independent nation and animals of varying exoticism roam free through its streets; a place his great-great-grandfather made the Elms’ home over a century ago and a city that has borne witness to epoch- and world-changing events.
Venice – James Morris
Often hailed as one of the best travel books ever written, Venice is neither a guide nor a history book, but a beautifully written immersion in Venetian life and character, set against the background of the city’s past. Analysing the particular temperament of Venetians, as well as its waterways, its architecture, its bridges, its tourists, its curiosities, its smells, sounds, lights and colours, there is scarcely a corner of Venice that Jan Morris has not investigated and brought vividly to life.
James Morris first visited the city of Venice during World War II. As he writes in the introduction, ‘it is Venice seen through a particular pair of eyes at a particular moment – young eyes at that, responsive above all to the stimuli of youth.’ Venice is an impassioned work on this magnificent but often maddening city.
Morris’s collection of travel writing and reportage spans over five decades and includes such titles as Sydney, Coronation Everest, Hong Kong, Spain and Manhattan ’45. Since its first publication, Venice has appeared in many editions, won the W.H. Heinemann award and become an international bestseller.
We Came By Sea – Horatio Clare
We Came By Sea, Stories of a greater Britain is an untold story of the small boats crisis, a story which shows the best of us. It is the story of the volunteers who help thousands of refugees in Calais, of the lifeboat crews mounting one of the great search and rescue operations of all time, of an unrecognised, uncelebrated, all but unknown Britain which is giving its all to help the vulnerable and desperate. It is a journey through an unexamined nation, a nation which is as truly great and good as the people in the dinghies believe Britain to be. It is not the story we have been told, and it is a true story.
Ultra-Processed People: Why Do We All Eat Stuff That Isn’t Food … and Why Can’t We Stop? – Chris van Tulleken
It’s not you, it’s the food.
We have entered a new age of eating. For the first time in human history, most of our calories come from an entirely novel set of substances called Ultra-Processed Food. There’s a long, formal scientific definition, but it can be boiled down to this: if it’s wrapped in plastic and has at least one ingredient that you wouldn’t find in your kitchen, it’s UPF.
These products are specifically engineered to behave as addictive substances, driving excess consumption. They are now linked to the leading cause of early death globally and the number one cause of environmental destruction. Yet almost all our staple foods are ultra-processed. UPF is our food culture and for many people it is the only available and affordable food.
In this book, Chris van Tulleken, father, scientist, doctor, and award-winning BBC broadcaster, marshals the latest evidence to show how governments, scientists, and doctors have allowed transnational food companies to create a pandemic of diet-related disease. The solutions don’t lie in willpower, personal responsibility, or exercise. You’ll find no diet plan in this book―but join Chris as he undertakes a powerful self-experiment that made headlines around the world: under the supervision of colleagues at University College London he spent a month eating a diet of 80 percent UPF, typical for many children and adults in the United States. While his body became the subject of scientific scrutiny, he spoke to the world’s leading experts from academia, agriculture, and―most important―the food industry itself. But more than teaching him about the experience of the food, the diet switched off Chris’s own addiction to UPF.
In a fast-paced and eye-opening narrative he explores the origins, science, and economics of UPF to reveal its catastrophic impact on our bodies and the planet. And he proposes real solutions for doctors, for policy makers, and for all of us who have to eat. A book that won’t only upend the way you shop and eat, Ultra-Processed People will open your eyes to the need for action on a global scale.
The North Road – Rob Cowen
At the heart of this book is a highway. The A1; The Great North Road. A 400-mile multiplicity of ancient trackway, Roman road, pilgrim path, coach route and motorway that has run like a backbone through Britain for the last 2,000 years.
In this genre-defying and profoundly personal book, Cowen follows this ghost road from beginning to end on a journey through history, place, people and time. Weaving his own histories and memories with the layered landscapes he moves through, this is the story of an age, of coming to terms with time past and time passing, and the roads that lead us to where we find ourselves.
Written in kaleidoscopic prose, The North Road is an unforgettable exploration of Britain’s great highway.
In Search of the Perfect Peach: Why Flavour Holds the Answer to Fixing Our Food System – Franco Fubini
What makes a great-tasting tomato? Why do scarred greengages taste better? Is ‘eating local’ everything it’s cracked up to be?
The first bite of a perfectly ripe peach can be truly transformative – a joyful experience that stays with you forever. But, as Franco Fubini came to realise, flavour is a signifier of so much more than nostalgia. It has the power to change the way we grow, shop and eat – transforming the planet as well our palates.
From the citrus groves of Sicily to a knock-out taco in Mexico City, this is the story of how Franco’s pursuit of flavour led him on a journey to understand how this incredibly simple desire can lead to radical change. Having spent over two decades as the founder of Natoora, sourcing amazing flavour for some of the best kitchens and most demanding chefs in the world, Franco brings together his intimate experience of the supply chain in a book that shines a light on how flavour has dropped off our plates and how we can get it back.
Through flavour, a better future of food suddenly becomes one in which we are not only closer to nature and to the people who grow our food, but where we are also actively building seasonal diversity back into our diets, putting nutritious food on our plates and restoring the health of our soils.
Franco Fubini offers us a deeply optimistic vision of how we, as consumers, can follow flavour to fix the food system and bring joy to our every meal.
Lone Wolf: Walking The Faultlines Of Europe – Adam Weymouth
In 2011, a lone male wolf nicknamed Slavc set out from Slovenia, and, tracked by a GPS collar, travelled for 2000km, before arriving four months later in Lessinia, an Italian plateau north of Verona. Finding the only female wolf for hundreds of miles around, they started a lineage now some fifty of which live on the plateau to this day, the first wolves in the Italian Alps for 150 years.
In Lessinia, Adam Weymouth follows the path of Slavc, tracing the changes facing these wild corners of Europe, where the call to rewild meets the urge to preserve culture, where nationalism and progress pull away, and where the people are travelling, too.
The result is a multifaceted account of a country caught in a moment of kaleidoscopic change, from an award-winning writer with a uniquely perceptive eye for detail.
Craftland: A Journey Through Britain’s Lost Arts & Vanishing Trades – James Fox
An enchanting and illuminating exploration of the history of craftsmanship and the world’s oldest craft traditions, documenting the rapid disappearances of time-honored practices and shedding light on artisanal work in the face of massive technological industrialization by renowned Cambridge art historian Dr. James Fox.
During an age of mass manufacturing, fast fashion, synthetic materials and the unsustainable practice of companies valuing quantity over quality, a return to tradition, connection, and simplicity is essential.
Art historian and award-winning broadcaster Dr. James Fox explores the rapidly fading crafts and artisanal traditions of the world—such as coopering, basket-weaving, wheelwrighting, metalwork, and blacksmithing—that have shaped so much of our history through their alchemy of the hand-made human touch and generational wisdom.
Fox explains the history of craftsmanship in Britain, taking readers across the lands and communities that originated there, teaching them about the practices, traditions, and people at their heart. From coopers to thatchers, basket makers to bellfounders and dry wall builders, Fox tours Britain, once the workshop of the world, in search of its lost and disappearing craft traditions and the artisans trying to keep them alive including, a rush weaver who has managed to rebuild a sustainable business with her baskets and other wares, a bell foundry that uses the same practices it used in the nineteenth century, and dry wallers, building walls one piece of stone at a time that could last two centuries.
Part travelogue and part historical record, Craftland is a profoundly intimate meditation on our human cultural heritage, exploring what we lose as these traditions fade from view in the race of progress, and what we stand to gain if we bring them back.
And my book of the year is:
Nature Needs You: The Fight To Save Our Swifts – Hannah Bourne- Taylor
The inspirational story of a bird lover who became a nature-warrior in a David v Goliath battle to save swifts from extinction.
Nature Needs You tells the compelling story of how Hannah, without campaigning experience, funding or contacts, set out to save swifts from extinction in the UK. Her mission is to change the law and make ‘swift bricks’ mandatory so that the birds who nest in our walls will have a future in Britain. Nature Needs You delves into the highs and lows of trying to win hearts and minds, grab the news agenda with her naked Feather Speech, win Caroline Lucas and Lord Zac Goldsmith’s support, navigate meetings with Secretaries of State and debates in the Houses of Parliament, survive the trolling and midnight self-doubt and raise a petition with the requisite 100,000 signatures for a Parliamentary debate. At stake, with a decline in numbers of over 60% since 1995, are the birds who have become our symbol of summer, the swifts screaming in the skies above us.
Steeped in love for the wild, by a talented writer, Nature Needs You is a clarion call to save the nature on our doorsteps and prove that passion can be a superpower in bringing change to nature-depleted Britain. Raw, funny, self-deprecating and unstoppable in turn, this is nature writing with the pace of a thriller. Hannah is now knocking at the door of the new Labour Secretary of State for Housing, in the hope that, where Rishi Sunak and Michael Gove failed, Angela Rayner and Matthew Pennycook will save our swifts.
So there you have it. Have you read any of these? Let me know in the comments below.
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