Peter Florence shares books that spark debate

The co-founder of the Hay Festival recommends books to spark debate and change minds. He is director of a new series of events, The Conversation, at St Martin-in-the-Fields.

Underland

Robert Macfarlane, 2019

A wondrous book about landscape and the living world that may change for ever and for better how we see our planet and our place here. Give it to everyone you love. Hell, give it to everyone you meet.

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Two Sisters

Åsne Seierstad, 2016

As in her unsparing study of the terrorist Anders Breivik, "One of Us", the Norwegian war reporter and investigative journalist takes us deep into the violent radicalisation of young Westerners, and their journeys out of the societies they grew up in and into the Syrian jihad.

The Lives of the Caesars

Suetonius, translated by Tom Holland, 2025

Today's Washington has nothing on Suetonius's Ancient Rome. You want to see crazy power run wild? Tom Holland brings his dearest "Father of the Show" into vivid, glorious English in this new translation.

The Wife of Bath: A Biography

Marion Turner, 2023

A love letter to Chaucer's favourite pilgrim, the fabulous and insatiable woman who is at the heart of "The Canterbury Tales". A book as bawdy and brilliant and celebratory as she is.

The Lorax

Dr Seuss, 1971

"Unless...". This is how to do it: irresistible language and storytelling, utterly persuasive eco-politics. We plant the Festivals Forest in Iceland because he wrote about truffula trees.

A Barrister for the Earth

Monica Feria-Tinta, published in April

Change needs everyone from protesters rebelling to CEOs and politicians reversing policy. Most of all it needs us to assess priorities. And it needs lawyers such as Monica Feria-Tinta to call and fight for the rights of the voiceless. This is how to do it too.