The writer and broadcaster picks four of his favourites. His next novel, "The Two Roberts", will be published by Canongate in September 2025.
May Day
This inspiring collection speaks directly to our fractured and fractious moment and offers a way out. Raised to believe in the power of protest by her adoptive activist parents, Jackie Kay recounts a lifetime of marching – against wars, against racism but always for love. Her poems contain anger but aren't angry; they contain grief but never surrender to despair.
The Week
Escape your echo chamber. Get the facts behind the news, plus analysis from multiple perspectives.
Sign up for The Week's Free Newsletters
From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.
From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.
Available on The Week Bookshop
The Color Purple
Alice Walker, 1982
This story of Celie and Nettie, two sisters torn apart in Depression-era Georgia, is my touchstone. It gave me courage. Like Celie, I faced abuse at home and hatred in the world. I felt ugly, alone and afraid. Reading Celie's story, in words that sounded spoken, made me believe her and myself.
Available on The Week Bookshop
There Are Rivers in the Sky
Elif Shafak, 2024
I can't stop thinking about this epic novel, stretching from the cruel splendour of Mesopotamia to Victorian London and the environmental catastrophe of now. Elif Shafak charts one drop of water across time and space – from falling as rain on a king's head, to falling as a snowflake on a baby boy who will grow up to uncover a poem that changes history. Water remembers. People forget. That's the tragedy at the heart of this incredible story about all the ways we (dis)connect.
Available on The Week Bookshop
Some Men in London: QueerLife 1945-1959 & 1960-1967, Vols. 1 & 2
Peter Parker, 2024
These astonishing anthologies take us from VE Day to 1967, when homosexuality was decriminalised in England and Wales (but not Scotland or NI). We meet ordinary men and famous faces such as John Gielgud. Parker skilfully synthesises the raw material of history – newspapers, diaries, letters – and a story emerges of a community with its own culture and language, thriving despite unjust laws and moral panics.
Available on The Week Bookshop
-
5 cinematic cartoons about Bezos betting big on 'Melania'Cartoons Artists take on a girlboss, a fetching newspaper, and more
-
The fall of the generals: China’s military purgeIn the Spotlight Xi Jinping’s extraordinary removal of senior general proves that no-one is safe from anti-corruption drive that has investigated millions
-
Why the Gorton and Denton by-election is a ‘Frankenstein’s monster’Talking Point Reform and the Greens have the Labour seat in their sights, but the constituency’s complex demographics make messaging tricky
-
Nan Goldin: The Ballad of Sexual Dependency – an ‘engrossing’ exhibitionThe Week Recommends All 126 images from the American photographer’s ‘influential’ photobook have come to the UK for the first time
-
American Psycho: a ‘hypnotic’ adaptation of the Bret Easton Ellis classicThe Week Recommends Rupert Goold’s musical has ‘demonic razzle dazzle’ in spades
-
Properties of the week: houses near spectacular coastal walksThe Week Recommends Featuring homes in Cornwall, Devon and Northumberland
-
Melania: an ‘ice-cold’ documentaryTalking Point The film has played to largely empty cinemas, but it does have one fan
-
Nouvelle Vague: ‘a film of great passion’The Week Recommends Richard Linklater’s homage to the French New Wave
-
Wonder Man: a ‘rare morsel of actual substance’ in the Marvel UniverseThe Week Recommends A Marvel series that hasn’t much to do with superheroes
-
Is This Thing On? – Bradley Cooper’s ‘likeable and spirited’ romcomThe Week Recommends ‘Refreshingly informal’ film based on the life of British comedian John Bishop
-
A Shellshocked Nation: Britain Between the Wars – history at its most ‘human’The Week Recommends Alwyn Turner’s ‘witty and wide-ranging’ account of the interwar years
