Non-fiction

Nature Tales for Winter Night by Nancy Campbell

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Nature Tales for Winter Nights

A lovely seasonal companion

Nature Tales for Winter Nights by Nancy Campbell is a curiously mistitled book. To the casual browser, at first glance it appears to be a short story collection, when in actuality, it’s a wintry-themed literary pick’n’mix. Almost fifty different pieces, ranging through time and genre; a lucky dip could bless the reader with a letter from Vincent Van Gogh, a passage from Virginia Woolf’s Orlando, or maybe an extract from the meteorological records of an Arctic explorer. Eclectic and evocative, it makes a lovely companion for these long, dark days of the year.

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Let It Go by Dame Stephanie Shirley

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Let It Go

One amazing woman

I was in awe of Let It Go by Dame Stephanie Shirley, the memoirs of one of Britain’s most successful (and possibly most unknown?) female software company entrepreneurs who sadly passed away this week. I certainly hadn’t heard of this amazing woman before and I’m willing to bet that many of you haven’t either. This inspiring book is the story of her journey from 5-year-old Kindertransport child in 1939 to one of Britain’s wealthiest women and most generous philanthropists.

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Is a River Alive?

A heartfelt love letter to nature

With the climate crisis breathing down our necks, interest in nature books has surged. Some are wonderfully uplifting, others more challenging reads. Is a River Alive? by Robert MacFarlane is a bit of both as he takes us from the magnificent cloud forests of Ecuador to the sprawling wilderness of Canada via the lifeless river Adyar in India. MacFarlane raises philosophical and legal questions around what is ‘alive’ and therefore has the right to legal protection, but mostly this book is about nature and the incredible people fighting to save it.

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Adventures in the Louvre by Elaine Sciolino

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Adventures in the Louvre

A charming tour of the people’s palace

A fortress, a palace, and now one of the world’s most marvellous museums, the Louvre has undergone several transformations in its centuries of existence on the  banks of the river Seine. Enticingly subtitled ‘How to Fall in Love with the World’s Greatest Museum’, Adventures in the Louvre by Elaine Sciolino invites us to a place that’s very close to the author’s heart. A gallery companion comprised of history, appraisal and personal vignettes along with some illuminating insider interviews, Sciolino’s labour of love is an oracle for Louvre virgins and veterans alike.

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The Evin Prison Bakers' Club by Sepideh Gholian

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The Evin Prison Bakers’ Club

Baking for the sisterhood

A unique and intriguing concept, The Evin Prison Bakers’ Club by Sepideh Gholian is both a prison memoir and recipe collection; a celebration of baking, as resistance, therapy, and heartfelt tribute to fellow detainees. Gholian, a human rights activist, is to date, still incarcerated in one of Iran’s infamously brutal prisons. Beaten and tortured, she remains unbowed, having smuggled out the contents of this book in order to tell the world about Iranian repression and to raise a beacon of hope.

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Birds as Individuals by Len Howard

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Birds as Individuals

Flights of joy

A delightful read for fans of nature writing, bird life, and old-school English eccentrics, the 1952 book, Birds as Individuals by Len Howard has been deservedly reprinted as a Vintage Classic. The author, Gwendolen (Len) Howard left her life as an orchestral musician in London in the late 1930’s, to pursue her calling as a naturalist in the Sussex countryside. Here, she built a small house, Bird Cottage, threw the doors and windows open to the birds of her garden, and lived the rest of her days in intimate observation of her avian housemates and (literal) bedfellows.

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The Story of a Heart by Rachel Clarke

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The Story of a Heart

The ultimate gift

A testament to love, altruism, and modern medicine, The Story of a Heart by Rachel Clarke is one of sixteen titles unveiled on the 2025 Women’s Prize for Non-Fiction Longlist. In this compelling account of one child’s gift of life to another, Clarke introduces us to Max, a nine-year-old with a failing heart, and Keira, a girl whose heart will sustain him after her death in a car crash. With unfailing warmth and sensitivity, Clarke relays the story of two families during the bleakest moments of their lives, and the aftermath of their decisions. Alongside this, we learn the medical and cultural history of the heart transplant and the philosophical significance of ‘the chief mansion of the soul’.

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The Book Lover's European Bucket List by Caroline Taggart

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The Book Lover’s European Bucket List

Inspiration for your very own literary grand tour

How better to while away the lazy days of Twixmas than planning adventures for the coming year? The Book Lover’s European Bucket List by Caroline Taggart is a wonderful gift for wandering bibliophiles, a combination of practical guide and paean to European literature. One hundred literary landmarks are explored, from the heart of Shelley’s Rome to the contemporary Stockholm of Stieg Larsson’s Millennium trilogy. Meticulously researched and littered with writers’ quotes, Taggart whisks us away to a continental idyll, where you can ‘linger over a coffee or a cognac and imagine you are waiting for Simone de Beauvoir’.

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Entangled Life by Merlin Sheldrake

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Entangled Life

A fungus for every occasion

If thoughts about fungi ever flit through your mind, chances are it’s in reference to last night’s truffle risotto dinner, or perhaps, less fortunately, a bout of Athlete’s Foot or spreading spores on your bathroom ceiling. The splendid Entangled Life by Merlin Sheldrake is here to bedazzle your uninformed brain, as both a scientific exploration and all-round appreciation of fungi as ‘regenerators, recyclers, and networkers that stitch worlds together’. From medicinal aides to mind-controlling zombie types, there’s a fungus for every occasion; they are sophisticated, problem-solving survivors and our world would collapse without them.

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Broken Threads by Mishal Husain

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Broken Threads

An illuminating and compulsive read

I confess to being a complete ignoramus on the history of the partition of India. Luckily, the brilliant Broken Threads by Mishal Husain has come along to change that. Husain – fiercely intelligent BBC Radio 4 news presenter, feared by British politicians for her razor-sharp interviews – has written the memoirs of her grandparents and parents. In Broken Threads, she weaves together the political and the personal to create an insightful and moving account of their lives as well as India and Pakistan’s fraught shared history.

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