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A Gentleman in Moscow

A Tsarist Count surviving in revolutionary Russia

It’s 1922. We are in Moscow’s most distinguished hotel and one of its permanent guests, the unrepentant aristocrat Count Alexander Ilyich Rostov, has just been sentenced to a life in exile inside the hotel ‘never to set foot outside of The Metropol again.’ So starts A Gentleman in Moscow, a novel that it’s nearly impossible not to fall in love with, a true, yes I will say it, feel good story. It’s not going to change your life, but Amor Towels’ book (also author of Rules of Civility) will entertain and delight with wonderfully crafted characters and enviably elegant writing.

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Our Favourite Nature Books

The Signature of All Things by Elizabeth Gilbert

The Signature of All Things

Great storytelling with humour and ambition

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Shark Drunk: The Art of Catching a Large Shark from a Tiny Rubber Dinghy in a Big Ocean

A soothing journey to the bottom of the sea

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Gathering Moss by Robin Wall Kimmerer

Gathering Moss

Small is beautiful

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The Shepherd's Life by James Rebanks

The Shepherd’s Life

Eloquence, integrity, and lots of sheep

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Silence – In the Age of Noise

A peaceful little must-read

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What Happens at Night by Peter Cameron

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What Happens at Night

Emotional depth and purposeful peculiarity

Irresistibly billed as a combination between a Kafka story and a Wes Anderson movie, What Happens at Night by Peter Cameron is a mesmerising work of psychological fiction. The action, inaction, and plain weirdness centres around an unnamed, middle-aged American couple and their quest to adopt a child. Dying of cancer, the wife wishes to provide her husband with someone to love when she’s gone. Their destination is an orphanage located in the chilliest reaches of northern Europe, but first they must navigate the peculiar world of the Borgarfjaroasysla Grand Imperial Hotel and its eccentric inhabitants.

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The Years by Annie Ernaux

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The Years

WINNER OF THE 2022 NOBEL PRIZE - A trip down collective memory lane

The Years by Annie Ernaux is an unusual book, a sort of communal memoir mapping the personal story of Ernaux alongside the social and political history of France (and the world) between 1940 and 2006. This might sound a bit dry and academic, but The Years is strangely compelling, mainly because it speaks our own memories, of time passing and things changing. There were references here that went above my non-French head and I’m sure a native French would find this book even more poignant. It didn’t lessen my enjoyment of it though. The experience of time passing seems as universal as anything.

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The Marriage Portrait by Maggie O'Farrell

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The Marriage Portrait

A luscious historical drama

I’ve been craving a juicy historical drama and along comes The Marriage Portrait by Maggie O’Farrell. Set in Renaissance Italy, the novel is loosely based on Lucrezia di Cosimo de’Medici’s disastrous marriage to Alfonso, Duke of Ferrara. As many aristocratic girls of her time, poor 13 year-old Lucrezia becomes a chess piece in the political game of strategic unions. Farrell gets under the skin of our bewildered heroine as we follow her from one golden cage to the next. Her writing transports us to a different time with evocative descriptions of landscapes, interiors, clothing, smells and sounds. Is it as good as the fabulous Hamnet?  Not quite, but it’s nevertheless a delightful, fairytale-esque, page-turner.

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Gathering Moss by Robin Wall Kimmerer

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Gathering Moss

Small is beautiful

First emerging from the oceans to live on land over 350 million years ago, the humble moss plant is an evolutionary pioneer. The natural world is blessed with an amazing 22,000 varieties, and yet its entry in the English Dictionary insults with its miserly wordage. The splendid Gathering Moss by Robin Wall Kimmerer seeks to introduce us to these beautiful ‘rainforests in miniature.’ A scientist and proud Native American, Kimmerer combines biology, cultural history and indigenous philosophy. In this deliciously unexpected bestseller, we learn not only the history of an unsung plant hero, but the forgotten practice of true attentiveness.

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A Waiter in Paris by Edward Chisholm

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A Waiter in Paris

Low pay and high drama

The spirit of George Orwell hovers over the memoir A Waiter in Paris by Edward Chisholm. Indeed when Chisholm first arrives in the city in 2012, a copy of Down and Out in Paris and London is nestled in his suitcase, set to provide succour for his subsequent years of living unexpectedly on the brink of destitution. His account of life as a poorly paid, highly stressed waiter, surviving almost literally on coffee, cigarettes, and filched bread rolls, deglosses the elegant façade of one of the world’s most iconic cities.

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The Glass Pearls by Emeric Pressburger

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The Glass Pearls

The public wasn’t ready for The Glass Pearls by Emeric Pressburger when it was first published in 1966. Despite Pressburger’s fame as a filmmaker, sales of the book were poor. The reason becomes apparent once you start reading this psychological thriller. The protagonist is a Mengle-style Nazi war criminal hiding in a Pimlico boarding house and working as a piano tuner. However, Karl Braun (aka Dr Otto Reitmüller) is not your usual villain, he’s both cultured and charming and, as the story progresses, you find yourself oscillating between (almost) wanting him to escape and wanting him to be caught. Pressburger, himself a Jew whose mother and several family members perished in concentration camps, wanted to make a point. Even villains can be likeable which is exactly why they are so dangerous.

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