Robert Harris<\/p>\n
I was obsessed with Gorky Park by Martin Cruz Smith from the moment I read its opening sentence \u2014 \u201cAll nights should be so dark, all winters so warm, all headlights so dazzling\u201d \u2014 and I shamelessly borrowed his concept of an honest policeman in a corrupt totalitarian state when I came to write my first novel. I\u2019m going to reread it this summer, along with Polar Star, its sequel (which in many respects is even better), mostly for pleasure, but also to honour Smith, who died this month<\/a> \u2014 he was a writer, like John le Carr\u00e9, who showed just how intelligent and artful a thriller can be.<\/p>\n \u2022 Robert Harris: Conclave to elect a pope is like a global election<\/a><\/p>\n Nicola Sturgeon<\/p>\n Atmosphere<\/a> by Taylor Jenkins Reid is the perfect summer holiday read. It is a beautifully written, immersive story about pioneering women, the bonds of friendship, the beauty and heartbreak of true love and the risks people will take to help it triumph against the odds. Jenkins Reid also offers a fascinating insight into the US space programme in the 1980s, although she has undoubtedly, and rightly, deployed some artistic licence along the way to aid the story. If this book doesn\u2019t have you sobbing big ugly tears in the final pages, you must have a heart of stone. <\/p>\n David Nicholls<\/p>\n I was a fan already, but David Szalay\u2019s Flesh<\/a> blew me away. Scenes from a man\u2019s life, from adolescence to bruised middle-age \u2014 it\u2019s spare and tough, but also hugely entertaining, gripping like a thriller as Istvan experiences love and violence, sex and success, wealth and failure. Yes, it\u2019s a novel about a certain chilly masculinity, but Szalay is also intrigued by luck and chance, the way a random encounter or rash decision can send a life spinning disastrously out of control. <\/p>\n \u2022 David Nicholls: I adore Howards End \u2014 and I want to throw it across the room<\/a><\/p>\n Ian Rankin<\/p>\n I confess I came late to the works of Norman Lewis, not until a review somewhere piqued my interest (as the best reviews do). A Quiet Evening: The Travels of Norman Lewis<\/a> is a collection spanning five decades. Spain, South America, Sicily, Cuba and elsewhere \u2014 Lewis immerses himself in the local culture and history and brings fresh insights while providing terrific anecdotes and introducing the reader to a range of fascinating characters. The prose is sublime too. It\u2019s a chunky book (500 pages), but one you can dip into as the mood takes you.<\/p>\n Esther Freud I hadn\u2019t heard of Si\u00e2n James until I was sent a copy of her novel One Afternoon by the writer Rachel Joyce, telling me I\u2019d love it, and she was right, I did. Born in Wales, James won the Yorkshire Post Book Award when One Afternoon was published in 1975. It follows the adventures of Anna, who is recently widowed and in charge of three small girls when, quite unexpectedly, an inconveniently young and dashing actor declares his love. It\u2019s exquisitely written, moving and very funny, the dialogue is perfect and the book impossible to put down.<\/p>\n \u2022 Esther Freud \u2014 my favourite three books<\/a><\/p>\n Michael Gove Michael Gove<\/p>\n PETER TARRY FOR THE TIMES<\/p>\n No-one writes better about celebrity and the gilded, tortured lives of the famous than Roger Lewis. Erotic Vagrancy<\/a>, his study of Richard Burton and Elizabeth Taylor, is a gothic masterpiece. So I\u2019m looking forward to his updated The Life and Death of Peter Sellers, which is reissued this summer with a new introduction by Steve Coogan. It\u2019s the only book of his I haven\u2019t read and I know I\u2019ll love every detail of his portrait of the genius as monster. <\/p>\n Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall<\/p>\n Helm by Sarah Hall is a novel that features a mischievous wind as one of its main characters, a concept I love. It\u2019s out in August and I am reading an uncorrected proof that she sent me, which is incredibly exciting as normally I\u2019m reading novels two or three years after everyone else.<\/p>\n Mick Herron Mick Herron<\/p>\n DAVID LEVENSON\/GETTY IMAGES<\/p>\n Joanna Miller\u2019s The Eights<\/a>, about a group of young women who, in 1920, were among the first female cohort to matriculate at Oxford University, has heart, soul, intelligence and wit, and packing it might well make a suitcase lighter. If, on the other hand, American cop thrillers are more your thing, buy a pile of John Sandford novels \u2014 any John Sandford novels \u2014 and stack them next to your deckchair. Happy holidays.<\/p>\n \u2022 The novelist Mick Herron lets us into his cultural life<\/a><\/p>\n Chioma Nnadi, editor of Vogue<\/p>\n Maybe brain rot has truly set in, but my attention span is feeling more challenged than ever. I\u2019ve always been a sucker for short stories \u2014 I recently devoured Send Nudes, Saba Sams\u2019s collection, highly recommended. My friend and colleague Funmi Fetto recently turned her hand to the format. The collection is called Hail Mary, and follows the lives of nine Nigerian women. I\u2019ve been dipping in and out of both. And it scratches the itch of needing good literature \u2014 in a hurry. <\/p>\n James Rebanks<\/p>\n I love to take a well-thumbed favourite book on holiday, and no book is more of an old friend to me than Tove Jansson\u2019s The Summer Book<\/a>. She is best known for her Moomin books, but this is a wonderful coming-of-age novel about a little human girl called Sophia and her elderly, hilariously cantankerous grandmother. Set on a tiny Finnish island, over one timeless summer, it is a Scandi classic. <\/p>\n Rose Tremain<\/p>\n Dying to escape the 2020s crop of self-indulgent \u201cpoor-old-me\u201d narratives? Then go back immediately to John Williams\u2019s 1965 novel Stoner<\/a>, one of the most exquisite portraits of a stoical man under life\u2019s brutal cosh you will ever read. Born into rural poverty, \u201cWilly\u201d Stoner escapes the treadmill of farming life in the American Midwest to realise his unlikely dream of becoming a teacher of literature at the University of Missouri. But dream slowly turns to nightmare. An ill-judged marriage and a corrosive academic rivalry inflict lifelong punishment on a man with a dazzling mind and a too-kind heart. In its emotional intensity this novel has been compared to Jude the Obscure and holds up well under this scrutiny.<\/p>\n \u2022 Rose Tremain: \u2018Writing about sex has to be done with taste\u2019<\/a><\/p>\n Rory Stewart Rory Stewart<\/p>\n DAVID LEVENSON\/GETTY IMAGES<\/p>\n Tom McTague\u2019s Between the Waves: The Hidden History of a Very British Revolution 1945-2016 (out in September) is an extraordinary piece of writing and of historical research about Britain\u2019s relationship with Europe: it\u2019s lively, relevant, telling us so much about the world from which we are emerging, and what seems to be fracturing around us. <\/p>\n William Boyd<\/p>\n I\u2019m re-reading the 1977 revised version of John Fowles\u2019s 1965 novel The Magus. Fowles described his novel \u2014 he worked on it for 12 years \u2014 as the work of a \u201cretarded adolescent\u201d. Consequently, the plot is suitably heady and preposterous, but what redeems the novel is the fact that Greece and her islands are wonderfully, tactilely present on almost every page. If you\u2019ve never been to Greece, or are a passionate philhellene who can\u2019t make it this year, then reading The Magus will make you feel you\u2019ve actually been on holiday there. A very strange but undeniably beguiling book.<\/p>\n Daisy Goodwin<\/p>\n I loved Miranda Cowley Heller\u2019s debut novel, The Paper Palace<\/a>, but I think I like What the Deep Water Knows<\/a>, her follow-up novel in verse, even more. Each poem is a chapter in a life from childhood through marriage, motherhood, divorce and midlife crises. Funny, moving and above all true. I am looking forward to reading it properly, letting the words breathe before I gulp them down. <\/p>\n John Banville Penguin has just brought out another batch of handsomely repackaged Maigret novels by Georges Simenon, including The Saint-Fiacre Affair, a small but resonant masterpiece. The plot is, as usual, preposterous \u2014 Maigret is summoned to the village of his birth by an enigmatic announcement of an impending murder \u2014 but, as usual, it does not matter. The opening pages, in which Maigret performs his morning rituals in a grubby little provincial hotel, are a perfect example of Simenon\u2019s gift for fixing a scene with vividness and poetic accuracy. This is fiction of the highest order, transcending all conventions of mere \u201cgenre\u201d.<\/p>\n \u2022 John Banville: I will resist calling myself underrated<\/a><\/p>\n Tom Kerridge I can\u2019t wait for the latest Sportsman cookbook, The Sportsman at Home (out in November). I\u2019ve ordered it already. Stephen Harris and his pub on the Kent coast is one of the most beautiful and best places in the country. To show you how to cook using some of his techniques at home, this is a must-have for everybody.<\/p>\n Amol Rajan<\/p>\n I went to India for the first time in a decade this year, and feel intoxicated. Keshava Guha\u2019s very well-reviewed novel The Tiger\u2019s Share promises to chronicle the growing pains of the most diverse, energetic, youthful and complex nation, not to say civilisation, on Earth \u2014 and to do it through the prism of difficult family dynamics. Perfect. I have a vast family in India as my mum and dad were one of the 13 and 11 siblings respectively. I\u2019m half expecting one of my cousins to pop up in an early chapter. <\/p>\n Geoff Dyer<\/p>\n Don\u2019t make the mistake of thinking that this time you\u2019ll finally make it through a punishing book you\u2019ve been defeated by in the past. But do make sure it\u2019s something of the highest quality. So: The Transit of Venus by Shirley Hazzard. Two Australian sisters come to Britain in the aftermath of the Second World War. Their complex choices are rendered in prose that is gorgeously precise but never precious. One of the greatest \u2014 and most enjoyable \u2014 novels of the past 50 years.<\/p>\n Mishal Husain Mishal Husain<\/p>\n MIKE LAWN\/SHUTTERSTOCK<\/p>\n Lovely One is the memoir of the judge who made history three years ago when she became the first black woman to serve on the US Supreme Court. It goes from Ketanji Brown Jackson\u2019s family experience of segregation to her swearing in, and at this tempestuous time in American public life, I am hoping it helps me understand what it takes to serve at this level.<\/p>\n Kate Mosse Kate Mosse<\/p>\n DAVID M. BENETT\/GETTY IMAGES<\/p>\n The Safekeep<\/a> by Yael van der Wouden, the winner of the 2025 Women\u2019s Prize for Fiction, is an exceptional debut \u2014 exquisitely written, haunting, unsettling and deeply steamy. Set 15 years after the Second World War in a rural province in the Netherlands, it shines a light on the \u201cwhat happened next\u201d periods of history, the forgotten aftermaths of terrible events and what it meant for those living through such times. It\u2019s a story of revenge, the corruptions of history, obsession and desire. Van der Wouden manages to confound the reader so that our sympathies are constantly switching between the two female protagonists, Isabel and Eva. A perfect summer read.<\/p>\n \u2022 80 best books to take on holiday this summer \u2014 chosen by the experts<\/a><\/p>\n Abir Mukherjee<\/p>\n My pick this summer is The Good Liar by Denise Mina<\/a>. For me, Mina is the UK\u2019s finest living writer of crime fiction. Her novel The Long Drop, about a fictionalised 48 hours in the life of the serial killer Peter Manuel, is the best book I\u2019ve read in the past decade. The Good Liar is the tale of Claudia O\u2019Sheil, a forensic scientist who may have got the biggest case of her life wrong. It\u2019s about truth versus legacy and the personal cost of honesty. No one gets under the skin of characters quite the way Mina does. She\u2019s sublime, and this book is too.<\/p>\n Lionel Shriver Lionel Shriver<\/p>\n DAVID LEVENSON\/GETTY IMAGES<\/p>\n I\u2019m starting to aggressively rebel against the marginalisation of straight white males in the feminised publishing industry. If you too are sick of girliness and sensitivity, I can\u2019t recommend David Szalay more heartily. Flesh is fiercely male. The protagonist isn\u2019t given to tiring self-analysis. In a rags to riches to (spoiler alert) rags tale, a young Hungarian makes good in London because so many women want to sleep with him. But what makes this book is the writing: spare and muscular, with no frills, no decoration. Like a flat with bare walls, one table, and a chair.<\/p>\n \u2022 Lionel Shriver: Now I\u2019ve left Britain, here\u2019s what you look like<\/a><\/p>\n Simon Sebag Montefiore<\/p>\n Stephen Alford\u2019s All His Spies: The Secret World of Robert Cecil<\/a>, which tells the story of the clandestine life of the chief minister of Elizabeth I and James I. It is a fascinating voyage into the nexus of monarchy, politics, diplomacy and espionage that was controlled by Cecil. There are many books about Elizabeth, but this gives the reader a real grasp of how personal autocracy and government worked under the last Tudor and first Stuart sovereign. It is also a biography of Cecil himself. It is written beautifully, elegantly, sparely. Its research is the fruit of decades in the archives. It is a magnificent masterwork and a joy from start to finish.<\/p>\n Jonathan Coe<\/p>\n The protagonist of Father Figure by Emma Forrest<\/a> is a precociously clever Jewish girl who becomes entangled with the family of an oligarch when he places his daughter at her private school. The resulting intrigue fizzes and pops with diamond-hard observations on money, class, politics, sexuality and points in between. Forrest puts teenage emotions under the most powerful of microscopes, but this is anything but a small novel, and everything comes together beautifully in a coda that is wise, tender and moving.<\/p>\n Rowan Williams The plan is to get up to date (belatedly) with Sarah Perry\u2019s novel Enlightenment<\/a>. I\u2019m always impressed by her capacity to juggle different genres, voices and periods, and I found Melmoth one of the most searching and moving novels I\u2019ve read for quite a while, so expectations are high for this one. She\u2019s one of a handful of British novelists who can anatomise the byways and pathologies of religious faith with real understanding and still find startling things to say about grace and miracle. <\/p>\n \u2022 Rowan Williams: \u2018I shudder to think what Queen Elizabeth thought of me\u2019<\/a><\/p>\n Kevin Barry<\/p>\n Ian Penman is maybe my favourite critic, a mad zealot in praise of his eclectic enthusiasms, and with Erik Satie Three Piece Suite<\/a> he draws us into the belle \u00e9poque Paris of the great composer and innovator, and maps out his influence across 20th-century music, art and literature. It\u2019s a great book to dip in and out of, a kind of compendium of thoughts and digressions opening out from Satie\u2019s work and bittersweet life. I believe it will enliven (and help to inspire a playlist for) even the dreariest of holidays. <\/p>\n Alice Temperley Alice Temperley<\/p>\n NICK HARVEY\/REX\/SHUTTERSTOCK<\/p>\n AI is changing everything, from the way we work to how we dream. It\u2019s wildly powerful, potentially threatening and deeply inspiring. For me, it\u2019s not about fearing the future but understanding it, especially how it can help in my world: retail, media, storytelling, social content and creation. The blurring line between what\u2019s real and what\u2019s machine-made is exhilarating and unnerving. But it\u2019s happening fast, and it\u2019s best we keep up. So this summer, while I\u2019m soaking in sunsets and slow moments, I\u2019ll also be diving deep into the world of AI with How AI Will Change Your Life by Patrick Dixon.<\/p>\n Tom Holland<\/p>\n The book of my summer is not \u2014 by conventional standards, at any rate \u2014 a book at all. The Universal Turing Machine is subtitled by its author, the novelist Richard Beard, \u201ca memoir\u201d, but that barely scratches the surface of how dazzlingly original and multifaceted an achievement it is. Beard has divided his life into 64 chapters, and patterned them on to an online chessboard. The order in which these chapters are read is then determined in part by a randomiser. At once a homage to Georges Perec, a work of science fiction and an often hilarious Bildungsroman, it can be read free here: universalturingmachine.co.uk<\/a><\/p>\n \u2022 What we\u2019re reading this week \u2014 by the Times books team<\/a><\/p>\n And here\u2019s what the cabinet is reading Rachel Reeves<\/p>\n ANTHONY DEVLIN\/GETTY IMAGES<\/p>\n by Max Kendix<\/p>\n Rachel Reeves, chancellor of the exchequer<\/p>\n As Rachel Reeves eyes her autumn budget, she believes that there is one way out of Britain\u2019s economic malaise \u2014 economic growth, whatever the cost. Her choice of book, Abundance<\/a> by Ezra Klein and Derek Thompson, reflects this mentality. At its heart is a criticism of bureaucracy that stifles change and growth. Abundance, the notion of plenty that was once a byword for the American dream, has been reduced to a \u201cpolitics of scarcity\u201d. Keir Starmer\u2019s mantra, that Britain must be a nation of builders not blockers, has echoes in this book. Whether rhetoric will meet reality remains to be seen.<\/p>\n Richard Hermer, attorney general<\/p>\n The attorney general is delving into ideological rigidity. In The Ideological Brain<\/a>, Leor Zmigrod, a political psychologist and neuroscientist, asks whether ideological differences can be explained by the way people\u2019s brains work. She highlights brain scans showing that the amygdala, which processes negative emotions, is larger in those disposed to extreme right-wing ideologies. Experiments suggest that those with prejudiced views are more likely to reject the evidence of their own eyes in favour of existing patterns. It\u2019s a contentious and provocative book, and an interesting choice from Hermer, who has faced claims of ideological purism himself.<\/p>\n Shabana Mahmood, justice secretary<\/p>\n Mahmood, whose first year in office has been dominated by the prisons crisis, has opted for pure escapism. She has picked Richard Osman\u2019s thriller We Solve Murders<\/a>, a globetrotting tale of skulduggery among the super-rich. The book is pure Osman \u2014 the protagonists are a young bodyguard and her widowed father-in-law, an ex-policeman. Mahmood loves all detective fiction and would have gone for the new Cormoran Strike book, The Hallmarked Man, by JK Rowling\/Robert Galbraith if she could, but it\u2019s not out until September.<\/p>\n \u2022 Read more book reviews and interviews \u2014 and see what\u2019s top of the Sunday Times Bestsellers List<\/a><\/p>\n Jonathan Reynolds, business secretary<\/p>\n Reynolds has spent much of his first year in office attempting to tread the finest of lines. Securing trade deals with the EU and US has meant attempting to balance competing factions, conflicting interests and at times mutual loathing. His success in negotiating with Donald Trump\u2019s regime and the court of Maga was pivotal in ensuring Britain was first in line for a trade deal with the US. Perhaps unsurprisingly, then, Reynolds has gone for a classic \u2014 Hilary Mantel\u2019s Wolf Hall<\/a>. Intrigue and treachery as courtiers attempt to navigate the whims of one man. <\/p>\n Heidi Alexander, transport secretary Heidi Alexander<\/p>\n LEON NEAL\/AFP\/GETTY IMAGES<\/p>\n![\"Portrait](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/07\/\/321e03ff-4947-492d-ac27-af7eb1d70508.jpg\")
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<\/p>\n![\"Heidi](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/07\/\/25dbf9e5-eb1c-42ce-92c7-7a445b66cbc6.jpg\")
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