21st March 2025


Devi Sridhar How Not to Die (Too Soon): The Lies We’ve Been Sold and the Policies That Can Save Us


Viking, 12th, HB, £22, 9780241742846


Why, despite the avalanche of self-help books, do we remain embroiled in multiple global health crises? The answer, says the author – a leading expert in public health – is that we have been sold a monumental lie. The obsession with individual health optimisation has distracted us from the real game-changer – holding governments accountable for health policies that could prolong life. Sounds compelling.


SJ Strum Baby Name Envy: The New Way to Choose a Baby Name You’ll Love


Vermilion, 19th, HB, £16.99, 9781785045585


Strum is the UK’s leading baby name expert and this is her gifty guide to choosing a name for your newborn, with journal prompts, quizzes and suggestions divided into Themes and Trends such as Nature, Meanings and Passions.


Caoimhe Whelan, Lauren Rebbeck Practical Breastfeeding: An Illustrated Guide for Parents


Canbury, 5th, PB, £20, 9781914487392


Aimed at “Instagram- viewing modern mothers”, this is billed as the only fully illustrated guide to breastfeeding. Written in empathetic and representative language and aimed at Generations Y and Z, it covers such issues as feeding frequency, latching, mastitis and cracked nipples.


History


Oliver Basciano ( 7) Outcast: A History of Leprosy, Humanity and the Modern World


Faber, 19th, HB, £20, 9780571384303


Roving from St Albans in the UK to Norway, Hawaii, South Africa, Brazil, Japan and beyond, this revelatory global history of humanity also spans thousands of years. Told through the lens of the much misunderstood disease that is leprosy, it is a strikingly metaphorical story that has permeated cultures in myriad ways, dividing the world into the “clean” and “unclean” to this day.


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Jeremy Black The Four Georges: An Awfully British Kind of Monarchy 1714-1830


Amberley, HB, £22.99, 9781398123175


This takes a fresh look at how the British monarchy lost power in the 18th century under the four Georges but actually gained authority, “not least a moral authority it retains today”.


Frank Close Destroyer of Worlds: The Deep History of the Nuclear Age 1895-1965


Allen Lane, 10th, HB, £25, 9780241700860


Spanning decades and continents, this history of the nuclear age and the scientists who brought it about charts how the discovery of nuclear power was overwhelmed by the politics of the 1930s. Then, following the destruction of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, the way was opened to a still more terrible possibility: the thermonuclear bomb.


Gordon Corera The Spy in the Archive: How One Man Tried to Kill the KGB


William Collins, 5th, HB, £25, 9780008644796


The BBC News security correspondent tells the remarkable story of how Vasili Mitrokhin, the in-house archivist for the KGB, became determined to expose the truth about the dark forces that had subverted Russia, becoming first a dissident and then a spy. Mitrokhin defected to the UK in 1991 and died in 2005.


Delia Cortese The Fatimids: Portrait of a Dynasty


Reaktion, 1st, HB, £25, 9781836390190


Highlighting the history of the Fatimid dynasty across North Africa, Egypt, Sicily, Syria, Palestine and Arabia, this examines its cultural and artistic achievements, and its legacy, including the promotion of women to unprecedented positions of authority.


Paul Coulter 10 Mistakes That Changed History: The Reckless Rulers, Monumental Mishaps and Disastrous Decisions That Have Shaped Our World


Bantam, 5th, HB, £20, 9780857507235


Based on Coulter’s stand-up show, 5 Mistakes That Changed History, this takes a comic tour through some of history’s greatest errors, from breakups that ended empires to


naps that sank ships. Alexander the Great, the Titanic and Apollo 13 all feature.


Sam Dalrymple Shattered Lands: The Five Partitions of India: 1937-71


William Collins, 19th, HB, £25, 9780008466817


We talk about a single partition of India, that in 1947 when Pakistan was carved out. But, argues Dalrymple (yes, son of William) in this debut history, we should actually talk about five: namely the Partition of Burma, the Great Partition, the Partition of Princely India, the Partition of Arabia and the Partition of Pakistan.


Eric Erlick Before Gender: Lost Stories From Trans History 1850-1950


Manchester UP, 10th, HB, £20, 9781526192714


Highlighting the lives of 30 trans people who “radically change everything you’ve been told about transgender history”, including Frances Anderson, the greatest female billiards player of the 1910s, and Gerda von Zobeltitz, a trans countess, this presents “affirming histories to expose modern manufactured panic”.


John Ganz


When the Clock Broke: Con Men, Conspiracists and the Road to Trump’s America


Penguin, 12th, PB, £10.99, 9781405981699


One of the Washington Post’s 10 Best Books of 2024 and a Barack Obama Summer Reading Pick, this takes a horribly compelling look at the tumult of the early 1990s and the rise of a new, more berserk America. Featuring such figures as Pat Buchanan, Ross Perot and former grand wizard of the Klu Klux Klan, David Duke, and a collective bringing to the surface of a “politics of national despair”, it shows how firm foundations for the Trump era were laid.


Stephen Gunn, Tomasz Gromelski An Accidental History of Tudor England: From Daily Life to Sudden Death


John Murray, 19th, HB, £25, 9781529333749


Full of weird and wacky tales of ordinary people’s grizzly fatal accidents; from bear attacks in north Oxford to horse tramplings and windmill manglings, this Horrible


History for adults trawls the coroner’s reports of Tudor times.


Christine and Jonathan Hainsworth The Shakespeare Ladies Club: The Forgotten Women Who Rescued the Bawdy Bard


Amberley, 15th, HB, £25, 9781398127449


Formed in 1736, the Shakespeare Ladies Club was a group of women who were crucial in saving the Bard’s work from obscurity and who campaigned for a statue to be erected in Westminster Abbey. This is their hitherto neglected story.


Richard Hargreaves Opening the Gates of Hell: Operation Barbarossa, June–July 1941


Osprey, 5th, HB, £30, 9781472869463


Based on more than a decade of research and published in advance of the 85th anniversary of the launch of Operation Barbarossa, a new account of the opening weeks of the Nazi Soviet conflict which began in the summer of 1941.


Adam Hart Operation Pimento: My Great-Grandfather’s Great Escape


Hodder, 5th, HB, £22, 9781399740135


As told by his 20-something great- grandson who traced his epic journey through France, Switzerland and Spain, this is a gripping account of RAF Squadron Leader Frank Griffiths’ remarkable escape from the Nazis, the only survivor after his plane was shot down over occupied France. “My generation is the first one unable to hear their ancestors’ war stories first-hand”, writes Hart in the introduction to this admirable book.


Jonathan Healey The Blood in Winter: A Nation Descends, 1642


Bloomsbury, 26th, HB, £25, 9781526672292


This “thrilling” political history charts the discontented winter months of 1641/2, which brought the country to the cusp of Civil War as Charles I plotted to march on Westminster and restore his absolute rule.


Christine Lehnen Remembering Women: Lessons From the Ancient World


Icon, 19th, HB, £20, 9781837732173


Arguing that there are plenty of historical precedents for a fairer, more equal society, Lehnen explores our collective memory of women’s lives, from the earliest human bone calendars to stories of her mother and grandmothers.


Helen Lewis The Genius Myth Cape, 19th, HB, £22, 9781787333246


You can tell what a society values by who it labels as a genius. So argues the author of Difficult Women in this “timely and entertaining” take-down of the genius myth, in which she explores why some lives are elevated to “greatness”. Along the way she uncovers the secret of The Beatles’ success, asks why biographers should solve the Austen problem, and reveals why Stephen Hawking thought IQ tests were for losers.


Alistair Moffat To See Ourselves: A Personal History of Scotland Since 1950


Birlinn, 5th, HB, £18.99, 9781780279473


Considering themes including housing, healthcare, sport, the media, and the arts, this latest book by the Scottish historian traces how the fabric of life has changed in Scotland since 1950, weaving his own recollections with other eyewitness accounts.


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Books New Titles: Non-Fiction


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