The celebrated photojournalist picks six favourites. He will talk to Richard Ovenden about his life and work, and will be awarded this year's Bodley Medal, at the Oxford Literary Festival on 3 April.
Pleasure of Ruins
I dug this out of a charity shop 25 years ago and it inspired me on my own journeying around the Mediterranean basin, resulting in three books on the ruins of the Roman empire. Macaulay's prose is stirring, and triggered my own fascination with stone.
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If This Is a Man
Primo Levi, 1947
I return to this book when my violent nightmares become extreme, for it is a lesson in being human, even in unimaginable depths of horror. Written in a spare style, the memoir is about the author's arrest and subsequent incarceration at Auschwitz.
Robinson Crusoe
Daniel Defoe, 1719
This was a favourite childhood book, and when I read it as an adult I also appreciate Defoe's journalistic and political bent of mind – a man not prepared to take anything at face value.
The Wilder Shores of Love
Lesley Blanch, 1954
I've always enjoyed travel writing, especially when it conveys worlds and times that no longer exist. This is a collection of mini-biographies about the separate adventures of four very different women who made the Middle East their home.
Broken Archangel
Roland Philipps, 2024
I've been long drawn to the maverick Roger Casement, a brilliant Irishman, rebel and diplomat who was arrested for high treason and executed. He was many things, but also a humanitarian exposing atrocities in Congo. Philipps's biography brings all his complexities into view.
King Leopold's Ghost
Adam Hochschild, 1998
If you want to understand the turmoil and unrest of Africa today, it's worth reading this haunting account, exploring one colonising nation's mission to exploit the state of Congo in the late 1800s. The atrocities that were committed can't quite be believed.
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