The writer and broadcaster chooses five of his favourites. His new book, "Your Journey, Your Way" – a guide to the mental health system, based on the author’s own experiences – is out this week.
In Praise of Older Women
This reads like an outrageously frank autobiography but is a novel about a man, like the author, who flees Soviet Hungary in 1956, eventually to Canada. Various aspects of sex and romance are encountered in a paean to the joys and complexities of relationships. The scene which explains how to seduce a stunning girl in an empty café with a battered ashtray is an all-time classic.
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A.A Gill is Away
A.A. Gill, 2002
The great A.A. Gill is at his extraordinary best throughout this masterclass in the art of travel essays. Colleagues on the Sunday Times thought it tasteless to send a restaurant and TV critic to cover a Sudanese famine until Gill filed a dispatch so exquisitely honest and telling that it made them cry. He was a phrasemaker of genius.
Available on The Week Bookshop
Thunderstone
Nancy Campbell, 2022
A modern classic, this is a story of love, solitude and community set in the edgelands of Oxford. Sings with life – thought, felt and hymned.
Available on The Week Bookshop
Anima
Kapka Kassabova, 2024
My generation’s great travel writer moves to the wild highlands of Bulgaria and lives with the shepherds. Kapka Kassabova loses her relationship, her non-smoking and nearly her life and sanity to the mountains, the bears and alcoholic madmen she writes about, scoring another triumph in her Bulgarian quartet.
Available on The Week Bookshop
Wild Twin
Jeff Young, 2024
A sequel to the Costa-shortlisted "Ghost Town" – a haunted meditation on Liverpool which explores time and memory with a lyrical and shamanic intensity. "Wild Twin" (published on 18 September) follows the artist as a young man to Amsterdam, then at its counter-cultural peak. The two books are a profoundly serious attempt to see time afresh.
Available on The Week Bookshop
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Striking homes with indoor poolsFeature Featuring a Queen Anne mansion near Chicago and mid-century modern masterpiece in Washington
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Why are federal and local authorities feuding over investigating ICE?TODAY’S BIG QUESTION Minneapolis has become ground zero for a growing battle over jurisdictional authority
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‘Even those in the United States legally are targets’Instant Opinion Opinion, comment and editorials of the day
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Striking homes with indoor pools
Feature Featuring a Queen Anne mansion near Chicago and mid-century modern masterpiece in Washington
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One great cookbook: Sara Kramer and Sarah Hymanson’s ‘Kismet: Bright, Fresh, Vegetable-Loving Recipes’the week recommends The beauty and wonder of great ingredients and smart cooking
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Film reviews: ‘No Other Choice,’ ‘Dead Man’s Wire,’ and ‘Father Mother Sister Brother’Feature A victim of downsizing turns murderous, an angry Indiana man takes a lender hostage, and a portrait of family by way of three awkward gatherings
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Courgette and leek ijeh (Arabic frittata) recipeThe Week Recommends Soft leeks, tender courgette, and fragrant spices make a crisp frittata
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A modern ‘Lord of the Flies,’ a zombie sequel and Jodie Foster’s first French-speaking lead role in January moviesthe week recommends This month’s new releases include ‘The Plague,’ ‘28 Years Later: The Bone Temple’ and ‘A Private Life’
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How to rekindle a reading habitThe Week Recommends Fall in love with reading again, or start a brand new relationship with it
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Avatar: Fire and Ash – third instalment feels like ‘a relic of an earlier era’Talking Point Latest sequel in James Cameron’s passion project is even ‘more humourless’ than the last
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The Zorg: meticulously researched book is likely to ‘become a classic’The Week Recommends Siddharth Kara’s harrowing account of the voyage that helped kick-start the anti-slavery movement
