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Alexander McCall Smith is the author of the Botswana-set No. 1 Ladies’ Detective Agency series, whose 27 books have sold more than 40 million copies. In the latest, The Big Cats Dance Party, a high-profile case falls to a novice sleuth while the agency’s founder is away.
‘A Pattern Language’ by Christopher Alexander (1977)
Alexander was a visionary professor of architecture at Berkeley. Here, he and several colleagues set out the principles of sympathetic design as an antidote to the brutalism of the late 20th century. You can use this book if you are designing a city, a building, or just arranging the furniture in a room or the shrubs in your garden. Buy it here.
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‘Collected Shorter Poems, 1927–1957’ by W.H. Auden (1966)
I never tire of Auden’s poems, especially “In Praise of Limestone” and the lovely, haunting “The More Loving One.” Auden remains as relevant in our troubled times as he was in his heyday. And he brings the same consolation with his wise, humane words. Buy it here.
‘The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie’ by Muriel Spark (1961)
“My pupils,” said Miss Brodie, “are the crème de la crème.” Beware of a teacher who says that sort of thing. Jean Brodie was a fascist, one of her charges eventually says, and she was. Spark, a writer of the first rank, brought her beautifully to life in this moving, rather sad novel of Edinburgh in the 1930s. Buy it here.
‘The Sword of Honour Trilogy’ by Evelyn Waugh (1952–61)
This trilogy is in my view Waugh’s masterpiece. It tells the story of Guy Crouchback and his experiences in the Second World War. Waugh was a magnificent writer, and his prose has a rare gravity and balance. Here he tells a poignant story, but one that has moments of memorable humor. Apthrop, an important character, is Waugh’s greatest comic creation. Buy it here.
‘Excellent Women’ by Barbara Pym (1952)
Pym was another Jane Austen. Her small-scale novels are full of witty observations. She focuses on the lives of people living on the margins of other, larger lives. Excellent Women is one of her best novels, a little gem. Buy it here.
‘The Spy and the Traitor’ by Ben Macintyre (2018)
Macintyre’s book about Oleg Gordievsky is quite simply the most exciting book I have ever read. Gordievsky, a high-ranking KGB officer, passed on information to the West for years. The story of his exfiltration from Moscow is utterly engrossing. Gordievsky probably saved us from nuclear annihilation. Buy it here.
