Tom Holland, co-host of The Rest is History and translator of\u00a0Suetonius: The Lives of the Caesars<\/p>\n
I have always found that memories of a book loved in the depths of summer have a peculiar, gilded quality. It is easy for me, then, to remember very precisely the summer read I most treasured as a child: Finn Family Moomintroll<\/a> by Tove Jansson. I devoured it so many times that now, when I recall its portrayal of Moomin Valley, its mixture of the joyous and the unsettling seems blurred with recollections of my own happiest times in summer. Adult memories of travel in Greece are similarly interfused with memories of reading The Marriage of Cadmus and Harmony, <\/a>\u00a0Roberto Calasso\u2019s dazzling, poetic and utterly inimitable rendering of the Greek myths. As for the book I have most enjoyed reading this summer, Richard Beard\u2019s The Universal Turing Machine is not really a book at all, but an online memoir that combines autobiography, science fiction and the inheritance of Tristram Shandy to create a most original masterpiece. It can be found (completely free of charge!) here.<\/a><\/p>\n Helen Thompson, author of Disorder: Hard Times in the 21st Century<\/p>\n My best holiday reading experience in recent years was Moby Dick.<\/a> I was travelling by train to Italy, and I thought that if I were ever going to read this book, it would be now. Somewhere on the train between Paris and Milan, I realised I was transfixed, and when I finished the novel on a beach on the Bay of Naples, it seemed as if reading it was the point of the holiday. It is the ultimate book about water and the cosmos, and I had arrived at the end of the journey the Pequod takes to Captain Ahab\u2019s destruction on that sea that sits under the looming shadow of Vesuvius.<\/p>\n The beginning of Moby Dick is very evocative about the island of Nantucket as a whaling port, and I\u2019ve come to see the book as a prophecy about what the global search for oil will bring. But there is also this near love letter to historical and literary England. Herman Melville compares the decks of the Pequod to \u2018the pilgrim-worshipped flag-stone in Canterbury cathedral where Becket bled\u2019. Generally, there is this wonder at the waves and a biblical blackness to them, and reading the novel, you ride them wherever Melville has them take you.<\/p>\n Paul Lay, Senior Editor, Engelsberg Ideas<\/p>\n This year has been a mixture of old and new, fiction and non-fiction. Books on the British Civil Wars (or whatever we now call it) continue to flow steadily \u2013 with a menacing resonance for today\u2019s divided society. Jonathan Healey\u2019s The Blood in Winter <\/a>is a riveting and darkly witty account of the conflict\u2019s origins, while Minoo Dinshaw\u2019s\u00a0Friends in Youth<\/a>\u00a0is a moving account of the friendship of two leading Parliamentarians, Edward Hyde and Bulstrode Whitelocke, who ended up, like so many, on opposing sides.<\/p>\n For fiction, I remain obsessed by the works of Anita Brookner, a supreme stylist, economical, elegant and incisive. Her short novel \u2013 aren\u2019t they all? \u2013\u00a0A Misalliance<\/a> blew me away, as did the very different experience of Thackeray\u2019s great historical novel, The History of Henry Esmond<\/a>.<\/p>\n Dominic Sandbrook, historian and co-host of\u00a0The Rest is History<\/p>\n My summer reading has been somewhat skewed by the fact that I have been recording episodes for a new book podcast, a spin-off from Rest is History, which is due to launch later this year. So I\u2019ve been happily re-reading some of the classics, from Dracula<\/a> and Wuthering Heights<\/a> to The Hobbit<\/a> \u00a0 and The Handmaid\u2019s Tale. <\/a>One book I hadn\u2019t read before, though, was Truman Capote\u2019s true-crime chiller In Cold Blood<\/a> \u2013 the book that, according to its author, created the genre of the non-fiction novel. My co-presenter Tabby had been telling me for months how brilliant it is, and she was quite right. The story of how two American drifters murdered a picture-perfect farming family in 1950s Kansas grips you from the very first page, with a sense of colour and texture to match any 19th-century novel. It\u2019s a work of genius \u2013 there\u2019s just no other word for it.<\/p>\n Johan Hakelius, political editor-in-chief of Fokus, Sweden\u2019s leading current events weekly<\/p>\n Every other summer or so, I can\u2019t stay away from Anthony Powell\u2019s magnificent suite, A Dance to the Music of Time. <\/a>It mirrors the randomness of cause and effect we experience, since we do not live in a neatly sanitised narrative. When I first read it, during a rainy summer 20 years ago, I was taken in by the suspense Powell manages to create from fairly ordinary circumstances. Other summers, I was gripped by his decoding of changing mores or his complex and convincing characters. I suppose this puts me firmly among Powell\u2019s \u2018socially and intellectually insecure\u2019 fans, as the great and \u2014 by all sane men \u2014 revered Auberon Waugh put it in his legendary attack on Powell in the Sunday Telegraph. So be it.<\/p>\n The Swedish author Torgny Lindgren recounts in one of his books, Reminiscences,<\/a> how his parents became concerned after Torgny had landed his first job as a reporter. \u2018You should get an honest occupation and not be a burden to others,\u2019 is his father\u2019s verdict. When Torgny protests that he is getting paid, his father counters: \u2018You are a burden to the readers.\u2019 Anyone who makes a living out of writing must admit that Lindgren senior has a point. However, Torgny Lindgren is a light burden to carry. I suggest you start with Hash<\/a>, a somewhat absurd, serious and hilarious tale of offal stew, nazi war-criminals in hiding and everyday life in a remote part of Sweden.<\/p>\n Alastair Benn, Deputy Editor, Engelsberg Ideas<\/p>\n I do not associate reading with summertime \u2013 although I must have read many books in this season of the year, none have left me with powerful, and enduring, associations. Summer is for physical freedom and ease, and sensuous abundance. Spend time in nature, not in a book \u2013 go to lands where the sun never sets. Climb mountains. Swim under golden skies. Use the rest of the year for reading.<\/p>\n Katherine Harvey, author of The Fires of Lust: Sex in the Middle Ages<\/p>\n Since my summers never involve as many holidays as I\u2019d like them to, I often supplement my travels by reading about other people\u2019s. Last summer, after a wet week in Ireland, I enjoyed Mia Kankim\u00e4ki\u2019s The Women I Think About At Night<\/a>, in which she follows in the footsteps of the female artists and explorers who inspire her, from Artemisia Gentileschi to Karen Blixen. Mixing travelogue, memoir and biography, it\u2019s the sort of book that makes you want to travel, but also leads to further reading. Cal Flyn\u2019s Thicker Than Water<\/a> is an engaging account of her journey through Australia in search of her distant ancestor, Angus McMillan \u2013 a 19th-century settler who turns out to be a rather darker character than the family legends suggested. And Christiane Rutter\u2019s 1938 memoir A Woman in the Polar Night<\/a>, a vivid account of the year she and her husband spent living in a hut in the Arctic, is the perfect antidote to summer heat.<\/p>\n Jack Dickens, Commissioning Editor, Engelsberg Ideas<\/p>\n I recommend jetting off to the Caribbean in the late 1950s with Graham Greene\u2019s\u00a0Our Man in Havana. <\/a>It is a rare treasure: a Cold War spy story that explores serious themes about human nature while also being delightfully funny.\u00a0In crafting the plot, Greene drew on his own insider experience, acquired while working for Britain\u2019s Secret Intelligence Service during the Second World War. He revels in mocking the public school mandarins in Whitehall and MI6, who are constantly duped by bogus reports from their man on the ground in Cuba, James Wormold, a British vacuum cleaner salesman who, in turn, is hopelessly out of his depth. With the incompetence of the British state currently in the headlines, Greene\u2019s novel has a strangely contemporary resonance.<\/p>\n If the Caribbean doesn\u2019t take your fancy, then I would suggest an adventure in Central Asia with Peter Hopkirk\u2019s\u00a0The Great Game.<\/a>\u00a0Written with a novelist\u2019s literary flair and imagination, an historian\u2019s eye for detail, and a journalist\u2019s nose for a good story, The Great Game charts the epic struggle between imperial Russia and the British Raj for mastery in Central Asia. Spanning the 19th century and beyond, Hopkirk\u2019s account offers numerous windows into the workings of imperial conflict, diplomacy, and espionage. From St Petersburg and Samarkand to Simla and up into the High Himalayas, he brings his subject to life with a skill that few other non-fiction writers have been able to match.<\/p>\n Samuel Rubinstein, historian<\/p>\n There\u2019s no better way to spend the summer than in the company of a classic novel. A few summers ago, I read Herman Melville\u2019s Moby Dick<\/a> \u00a0for the first time.\u00a0The following summer, I read Laurence Sterne\u2019s hilarious, inimitable The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman.<\/a> I had inherited some nice, old editions of the final four volumes (of nine) from my grandmother, picked up one of them, and couldn\u2019t put it down; so I was moved to buy the whole set and start, as Tristram does, from the very beginning.<\/p>\n I did not choose to, but was required to, read George Eliot\u2019s Middlemarch<\/a> \u2013 it was the set text in my A-Level English Literature course. I\u2019m so glad it was; had it not been, who knows if I ever would have been able to devote the requisite time to it. Since it is so often described as the finest work of English literature, it hardly needs any defending (some of my Middlemarch opinions do need some defending, however \u2013 such as my deep admiration for the much-maligned Reverend Casaubon). However, on my insistence, my girlfriend brought it with us this summer on our trip to Canada. As she worked her way through the first couple of volumes on our long flight to Calgary, I was struck by how often it made her laugh. Eliot has an eye for social conventions, for recognisable types, like no other. It is a very funny book.<\/p>\n Daisy Dunn, author of The Missing Thread: A New History of the Ancient World Through the Women Who Shaped It<\/p>\n In my summer holidays as a teenager, I worked my way through the novels of Thomas Hardy and became, though a Londoner, a proud Wessex girl. I find myself returning to Hardy\u2019s books at this time of year to experience the English countryside in a different way. I\u2019ll revisit F. Scott Fitzgerald\u2019s Tender is the Night<\/a> for similarly nostalgic reasons, though it\u2019s set on the French Riviera and evokes an atmosphere more haunting than holiday. Recent summers have been enriched by Rosamund Lehmann\u2019s Dusty Answer,<\/a> the short stories of Somerset Maugham<\/a>, and the new works of history and biography I have saved up throughout the year. I took William the Conqueror to Madrid one summer. He wasn\u2019t the easiest of companions.<\/p>\n Sergey Radchenko, author of\u00a0To Run the World: The Kremlin\u2019s Cold War Bid for Global Power<\/p>\n Looking for something substantial to read this summer? Look no further than Lawrence Freedman\u2019s Strategy: A History<\/a>, a kaleidoscopic overview of some of the most important ideas that shaped strategic thinking from apes to corporate managers, with a whole panoply of great philosophers and social scientists squeezed in between. I\u2019ve read it twice \u2013 there go two summers \u2013 but it\u2019s so long and so incredibly rich, it could take another summer to really digest. Another summer favourite would be a fun, ideally Pulitzer-winning biography. Lots to go by here, but lovers of Italy will enjoy David Kerzer\u2019s The Pope and Mussolini<\/a>, a remarkable story of Pope Pius XI and his politically and morally complex relationship with the fascist state. The third book I would read over the summer would normally be a work of fiction.<\/p>\n When it comes to fiction, I am a big fan of the hundred years between 1850 and 1950, the best time for world literature. I could draw up a very long list of books here, but here\u2019s one with a hair-raising ending: Arthur Koestler\u2019s Darkness at Noon<\/a>, a totalitarian horror story, now newly translated from Koestler\u2019s original German manuscript. Who could wish for a better summer reading? Winter is coming!<\/p>\n Hannah Lucinda Smith, author of Erdogan Rising: The Battle for the Soul of Turkey<\/p>\n In summer, I like a nostalgic read, something easy to read that I can take to the beach and devour. In 2023, I loved Michael Cragg\u2019s Reach for the Stars<\/a>, a funny and sometimes bittersweet retrospective of the late 1990s pop scene, told through the agents, super fans, and members themselves of groups like Steps and 5ive. This year, I\u2019ve chosen a pair of books that are more substantial and set in the 2000s. Sarah Ditum\u2019s Toxic<\/a> retells the stories of a cast of famous women of that era, from Amy Winehouse to Kim Kardashian, with a 2020s feminist lens. Meanwhile, as a perfect companion, James Bloodworth\u2019s The Lost Boys<\/a> tracks toxic masculinity from the pick-up artist scene of the noughties to Andrew Tate, Adolescence, and Trump. Both have had me thinking about them long after I closed the last pages.<\/p>\n Rana Mitter, author of China\u2019s Good War: How World War II is Shaping a New Nationalism<\/p>\n In the summer of 1989, I went to Taiwan. My university arranged placements for us in Taipei at the city\u2019s Mandarin Training Centre. That was a particularly fraught summer: spring 1989 had seen the horrific killings of students and workers in Tiananmen Square, and the Chinese mainland was closed to foreigners.<\/p>\n The long novel I read that summer was The New Confessions<\/a> by William Boyd, published in 1987.\u00a0 I\u2019ve always enjoyed Boyd\u2019s novels, and this was the first, but not the last, of his books to explore one person\u2019s memories over a lifetime, through the character of John James Todd. Todd fights in the First World War, becomes a movie director in Europe and the US, becomes a war correspondent, and ends up on a Mediterranean island.\u00a0 As the title suggests, it loosely draws inspiration from Rousseau\u2019s Confessions,<\/a> one of the first modern autobiographies, which chronicles the highs and lows of a man\u2019s life from youth to middle age.<\/p>\n Although neither Rousseau\u2019s nor Todd\u2019s life has much similarity to mine, I think that being a first-year undergraduate wasn\u2019t a bad time to read that kind of novel about how early choices might shape the twists and turns of a life. Learning Chinese and about China was part of my early life. And it\u2019s stayed with me for decades, even as the country itself has changed beyond recognition.<\/p>\n Saffron Swire, Associate Editor,\u00a0Engelsberg Ideas<\/p>\n This summer, I\u2019ve been chewing my way through the collected diaries of the acclaimed Australian novelist Helen Garner. How to End a Story<\/a> is a beefy brick of a book \u2014 running to over 800 pages \u2014 but as it is untethered to any rigid chronology (separated only by years), you can dip in and out at leisure or disappear for hours to swim in her thoughts. Between her sharp, candid reflections on single motherhood (\u2018Being a mother is not something you finish; there is no tidy conclusion, no neat ending to the story\u2019), her literary struggles (\u2018I\u2019m not a natural writer \u2013 more a cross between a slow cook and a neurotic squirrel, gathering bits and pieces for years before I throw them all in the pot\u2019), and the emotionally abusive relationships along the way (\u2018V is bad-tempered, self-satisfied, impatient \u2013 while I encourage his work, he never nourishes mine\u2019), she also fills her pages with nods to writers old and new, from Cocteau, Germaine Greer to Virginia Woolf and E.M. Forster. Self-deprecating she may be, but Garner is sharp as a tack, and her confessional pillow talk has made for great company on stifling summer nights.<\/p>\n I also recommend a trip to the crumbling grandeur of 19th-century Sicily during the Risorgimento. Giuseppe Tomasi di Lampedusa\u2019s The Leopard<\/a> was my companion one sticky summer in Umbria many years ago, when I was both bed-bound and book-bound. I concur with E.M. Forster that\u00a0The Leopard is a \u2018great lonely book\u2019, but it also reminds you of \u2018how many ways there are of being alive\u2019. A relatively short novel, rich in prose and sumptuous in setting, it offers the chance to slip into another world \u2014 one ruled by opulent Sicilian aristocrats like its charismatic protagonist, Prince Fabrizio Salina, who tries to navigate sweeping political change as Garibaldi\u2019s forces advance. The tension between progress and tradition is handled dextrously by Lampedusa, encapsulated best in the book\u2019s timeless dictum: \u2018Everything must change so that everything can stay the same.\u2019<\/p>\n Katja Hoyer, author of Beyond the Wall: East Germany, 1949-1990<\/p>\n One summer, many years ago, I found myself in a caf\u00e9 in Rhodes. \u2018This is the life,\u2019 I thought, settled down in my shady spot and began to read. When the waiter came, he gave me a look. \u2018Nice holiday reading?\u2019 he asked, pointing at the cover, which proclaimed the title in big, bold letters: \u2018HITLER\u2019. I\u2019m not sure about \u2018nice\u2019, but it was good. Despite its 1,000 pages, Ian Kershaw\u2019s biography of Hitler<\/a> is a riveting page-turner. I can only encourage everyone with an interest in 20th-century history to brave the looks you\u2019re going to get and take it to the beach. As a German historian, I\u2019ve been drawn to German history throughout my summers. One all-time favourite of mine is\u00a0Fatherland<\/a> by Robert Harris \u2013 a gripping, fictional \u2018what-if\u2019 that has lost none of its tension. Set in an alternate\u2011history 1964, where Nazi Germany won the Second World War, it follows a Berlin detective as he investigates a high-ranking Nazi\u2019s death. Well worth enduring the inevitable stares from your seat neighbour on the plane.<\/p>\n Mathew Lyons, critic<\/p>\n