Highlights of the Season
with a drugs crime after a sting constructed by “fake sheikh” Mazher Mahmood.
August Archaeology
Adam Sisman Asa Briggs William Collins, 14 August, hb, £25, 9780008556419
From humble beginnings, historian Briggs wrote more than 50 books and was one of the best- known historians of his generation. But his inner life was more turbulent than it appeared from the outside, according to this new biography.
Rhys James You’ll Like It When You Get There: A Life Lived Reluctantly
Wildfire, 14 August, hb, £22, 9781035420414
Alice Roberts Domination Simon & Schuster, 28 August, hb, £22, 9781398510081
Who spread Christianity, how, and why? Telling the story of the fall of one empire and the rise of another, Roberts explores the relationship between Rome and Christianity; from a secluded valley in Wales to Constantinople.
Biography & Memoirs
Kate Price
This Happened to Me Leap, 5 August, hb, £22, 9781785123573
“Exquisitely rendered, transformative” memoir in which the author – an internationally recognised child sex trafficking expert, describes how she broke free of her own abusive childhood to create a life and family on her own terms.
Mutya Buena Real Girl Bantam Books, 7 August, hb, £22, 9780857506849
Buena was only 13 when she became one third of the original line-up of girl band Sugababes. In this, “the story of the girl the tabloids never saw”, she takes us through the highs of her spectacular career, as well as the lows that came with a life in the limelight.
Tulisa Contostavlos Judgement Blink Publishing, 8 August, hb, £22, 9781785128592
“Brutally honest and redemptive” memoir by the singer-songwriter and N-Dubz star, set during the year of her downfall when she was charged
10
From the Wild West of early internet chatrooms to the “sticky circus” of the Kavos strip, the comedian and Mock the Week regular presents a part comic memoir, part essay collection in which he takes a deep and honest dive into modern life and “how to get out of living it”.
Chris Bryant A Life and a Half Bloomsbury, 14 August, hb, £25, 9781526697219
In this compelling- sounding memoir, the long-time MP for Rhondda in Wales looks back on his life both in politics and beforehand, including his time as an Anglican priest, his experiences manning the barricades in Latin America, and his upbringing as the son of an alcoholic mother and estranged father.
this “deeply personal and revealing” memoir.
Gamal Turawa Unravelling Trapeze, 28 August, hb, £22, 9781398720572
The “incredible” true story of the UK’s first openly gay Black copper, and his journey from self-hatred to self-acceptance.
Manni Coe Little Ruins Canongate Books, 28 August, hb, £16.99, 9781837263240
Coe began writing this magical memoir well before any of the events described in brother. do,
you.love.me written with his brother Reuben. It takes us to The Corner, a crumbling but seductive old farmstead in a remote valley in Andalusia, which becomes the elemental setting for a long overdue reckoning with Coe’s past struggles and traumas, including sexual abuse.
Anthony Quinn Keegan Faber & Faber, 28 August, hb, £14.99, 9780571392254
“He was stranger than he knew – than any of us knew”. The Liverpool- born novelist and critic takes an entertainingly personal look at the career of Kevin Keegan: LFC legend, England manager, “mercurial competitor”, perm wearer, pop-star manqué and face of Brut 33.
Grant Harrold The Royal Butler Seven Dials, 28 August, hb, £22, 9781399621236
Billed as the “revelatory royal biography of the year”, this book by a former butler to King Charles shares “never- before-heard” stories about his time in royal service. Co-written with Charlotte Owens of the Daily Mail.
Miriam Toews A Truce That Is Not Peace Fourth Estate, 28 August, hb, £16.99, 9780008722845
Nicola Sturgeon Frankly Macmillan, 14 August, hb, £28, 9781035040216
Taking us from her working-class roots in Ayrshire to becoming the country’s first female and longest-serving Scottish first minister, Sturgeon reflects on her life and times at the forefront of politics in
The Bookseller Buyer’s Guide Non-Fiction
The author of Women Talking and All My Puny Sorrows returns with a singular memoir celebrating “disobedient memory, wit, writing and life”.
Muriel Spark, Dan Gunn (ed) The Letters of Muriel Spark Virago Press, 28 August, hb, £35, 9780349014340
This first in two proposed volumes of the letters of Muriel Spark covers the period from her
disastrous married life in South Africa through to her experience in post-war London as a struggling writer, and later her glittering success as a novelist.
Phillips Payson O’Brien War and Power Viking, 28 August, hb, £22, 9780241744031
In understanding war, we need to think less about weapons and battles and more about the economies, politics and societies that produce them. So says the professor of strategic studies author in this bold new analysis of modern warfare, which challenges the most common misunderstandings around recent conflicts including the Russia-Ukraine war.
Clare Paterson The Nine Lives of Annie Besant The History Press, 28 August, hb, £22, 9781035040216
Paterson charts the extraordinary – and largely untold - story of this pioneering Victorian feminist and “formidable and fearless fighter”.
Current Affairs
Samuel Miller McDonald Progress William Collins, 14 August, hb, £22, 9780008462475
Focusing on the perils of progress, the geographer offers a radical analysis of why our world has succumbed to environmental catastrophe, advocating a return to long-standing egalitarian values in order to turn the tide.
Nick Lowles How to Defeat the Far Right HarperNorth, 28 August, hb, £20, 9780008772970
The founder of HOPE Not Hate draws on 20 years of anti-fascist activism to examine the clear and present current political threats and provide an explanation for what is happening. He also suggests practical and realisable ways in which to combat the far right.
General History
Renaud Leblond The Swimmer of Auschwitz
Monoray, 14 August, pb, £8.99, 9781800962965
Nakache was a Jewish French swimmer who swam for his country at the Berlin Olympics in 1936. Then he was deported to Auschwitz. This is the story of how he survived by swimming every day in the camp’s water reserves.
Malik Al Nasir Searching for My Slave Roots William Collins, 28 August, hb, £22, 9780008464486
“Where did I come from? A question that would dog me for the rest of my life.” Told through the lens of the author’s own mixed Guyanese heritage, and ancestors who included both enslaved people and prominent slaveholders, this is a “personal and compellingly narrated” exploration of an untold narrative of transatlantic slavery.
Ben Machell Chasing the Dark Abacus, 28 August, hb, £22, 9780349146829
“For the past two years I have been immersed in a world I had spent most of my adult life trying to ignore and avoid.” This riveting and truly spooky book about the supernatural centres on the work of prolific paranormal investigator Tony Cornell – a rationalist and a sceptic – who spent decades probing the scenes of unexplained and chilling phenomena.
Philip Stephens These Divided Isles Faber & Faber, 28 August, hb, £25, 9780571381470
From the treaty of 1922 to the present day, this “timely and perceptive” book from an award- winning FT journalist considers the turbulent history of the past century of Anglo-Irish relations.
Lucy Inglis Born Bloomsbury Continuum, 28 August, hb, £25, 9781399414395
Cultural historian Inglis takes the reader on an epic journey through stories of women and birth over hundreds of thousands of years; from ancient Mesopotamian birthing practices
to the feminists who fought for the right to forget childbirth.
Harry Sidebottom Those Who Are About to Die Hutchinson Heinemann, 28 August, hb, £25, 9781529154009
Illuminating Roman ideas about everything from freedom to courage and the afterlife, the author of The Mad Emperor returns to take us on a “thrilling” journey through 25 hours in the life of a Roman gladiator, and of those who observed them fight, from emperors to slaves.
Robert Winder Three Rivers Elliott & Thompson, 28 August, hb, £20, 9781783968961
Creating a broadbrush collage of Europe’s past and future, this absorbing travelogue traces how three waterways – the Rhine, the Rhome and the Po – have influenced Europe’s social, economic and cultural history. Richly evoking the continent’s past, it also issues a stark warning for the future as Europe’s “water tower” is rapidly disappearing.
Social & Local History
Jonathan Mahler The Gods of New York Hutchinson Heinemann, 14 August, hb, £25, 9781529155082
With a cast of outsize characters including young property developer Donald Trump, civil rights campaigner Al Sharpton and filmmaker Spike Lee, a “brilliantly ambitious” portrait of New York in the “convulsive and defining” late 1980s.
War & Military History
Jonathan Glancey V-Force Atlantic Books, 7 August, hb, £22, 9781838957957
Published 80 years on from the atomic
Page 1 |
Page 2 |
Page 3 |
Page 4 |
Page 5 |
Page 6 |
Page 7 |
Page 8 |
Page 9 |
Page 10 |
Page 11 |
Page 12 |
Page 13 |
Page 14 |
Page 15 |
Page 16 |
Page 17 |
Page 18 |
Page 19 |
Page 20 |
Page 21 |
Page 22 |
Page 23 |
Page 24 |
Page 25 |
Page 26 |
Page 27 |
Page 28 |
Page 29 |
Page 30 |
Page 31 |
Page 32 |
Page 33 |
Page 34 |
Page 35 |
Page 36 |
Page 37 |
Page 38 |
Page 39 |
Page 40 |
Page 41 |
Page 42 |
Page 43 |
Page 44 |
Page 45 |
Page 46 |
Page 47 |
Page 48 |
Page 49 |
Page 50 |
Page 51 |
Page 52 |
Page 53 |
Page 54 |
Page 55 |
Page 56 |
Page 57 |
Page 58 |
Page 59 |
Page 60 |
Page 61 |
Page 62 |
Page 63 |
Page 64 |
Page 65 |
Page 66 |
Page 67 |
Page 68 |
Page 69 |
Page 70 |
Page 71 |
Page 72 |
Page 73 |
Page 74 |
Page 75 |
Page 76 |
Page 77 |
Page 78 |
Page 79 |
Page 80 |
Page 81 |
Page 82 |
Page 83 |
Page 84 |
Page 85 |
Page 86 |
Page 87 |
Page 88 |
Page 89 |
Page 90 |
Page 91 |
Page 92 |
Page 93 |
Page 94 |
Page 95 |
Page 96 |
Page 97 |
Page 98 |
Page 99 |
Page 100 |
Page 101 |
Page 102 |
Page 103 |
Page 104 |
Page 105 |
Page 106 |
Page 107 |
Page 108 |
Page 109 |
Page 110 |
Page 111 |
Page 112 |
Page 113 |
Page 114 |
Page 115 |
Page 116 |
Page 117 |
Page 118 |
Page 119 |
Page 120 |
Page 121 |
Page 122 |
Page 123 |
Page 124 |
Page 125 |
Page 126 |
Page 127 |
Page 128 |
Page 129 |
Page 130 |
Page 131 |
Page 132 |
Page 133 |
Page 134 |
Page 135 |
Page 136 |
Page 137 |
Page 138 |
Page 139 |
Page 140 |
Page 141 |
Page 142 |
Page 143 |
Page 144 |
Page 145 |
Page 146 |
Page 147 |
Page 148 |
Page 149 |
Page 150 |
Page 151 |
Page 152 |
Page 153 |
Page 154 |
Page 155 |
Page 156 |
Page 157 |
Page 158 |
Page 159 |
Page 160 |
Page 161 |
Page 162 |
Page 163 |
Page 164 |
Page 165 |
Page 166 |
Page 167 |
Page 168 |
Page 169 |
Page 170 |
Page 171 |
Page 172 |
Page 173 |
Page 174 |
Page 175 |
Page 176 |
Page 177 |
Page 178 |
Page 179 |
Page 180 |
Page 181 |
Page 182 |
Page 183 |
Page 184
