Highlights of the Season February
Marion Coutts What Did the Deep Sea Say? Fern Press, 5 February, hb, £20, 9781911717539
Biography & Memoirs
In the aftermath of catastrophic loss, a mother and young son cross the ocean to a remote strip of land on the north Atlantic and begin to imagine new ways of being. This memoir by the Wellcome Book Prize-winning author of The Iceberg is said to be a “stunning meditation on how the physical world can bring us back from the edge of grief”.
Max Olesker Making the Cut Ebury Press, 5 February, hb, £18.99, 9781529951721
Carol Chillington Rutter Lying Abroad Manchester University Press, 3 February, hb, £20, 9781526172068
In the early 17th century, the diplomacy of Henry Wotton saved Europe from war while he was serving as England’s ambassador to Venice. This study by a leading Shakespeare scholar profiles a complicated yet largely unsung figure whose actions in a crisis helped create modern diplomacy.
Mark Haddon Leaving Home Chatto & Windus, 5 February, hb, £25, 9781784746230
Haddon grew up in 1960s and 1970s Northamptonshire, with his sister, and a mother and a father who were not cut out for the job of parenting. Told in the form of short scenes from an anxious provincial life, threaded together with photos and illustrations, many by Haddon himself, this is an utterly distinctive childhood memoir: sad, wickedly funny, brutally honest.
Sajid Javid The Colour of Home Abacus, 5 February, hb, £25, 9780349147628
This moving childhood memoir by the former Conservative chancellor, as well as home and health secretary, charts his early years of navigating poverty, racism and the growing tension he began to feel in trying to conform to two cultures. It is also a story of hope and determination, and an invitation to every “outsider” to keep going and “dream big”.
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When comedian and former professional wrestler Olesker meets Eliana, a “dazzling modern Orthodox Jewish girl in a bar in Edinburgh one night”; their connection is instant. But he discovers that, despite being an uncircumcised liberal Jew, he is not Jewish enough. “A touching and hilarious memoir of an unconventional Jewish love story.”
James Macintyre Gordon Brown Bloomsbury Publishing, 12 February, hb, £25, 9781526673411
Based on unique access to Brown’s personal archive and interviews with his family, friends, colleagues and political rivals, a “compelling” new biography of the former prime minister.
Jon Lee Anderson To Lose a War Fitzcarraldo Editions, 12 February, pb, £14.99, 9781804272435
By the long-time New Yorker reporter and veteran of numerous war zones, this collection of Anderson’s reports over 25 years forms a compelling account of the war in Afghanistan, “one of the greatest foreign policy failures of the modern era and a bellwether of a larger American imperial decline”.
Kate Barron Wilderness Mum Macmillan, 12 February, hb, £20, 9781035068517
Having left her life as a teacher in London behind for wilder horizons, Barron met homeless ex-paratrooper and now bestselling author Chris Lewis on a Scottish clifftop. This is her “inspiring memoir” of becoming a mother without sacrificing her spirit of adventure.
The Bookseller Buyer’s Guide Non-Fiction
Ashley James Bimbo Century, 12 February, hb, £22, 9781529958775
In her first book, broadcaster and campaigner James presents a “rousing, empathetic” feminist manifesto, exploring the impossibilities of being a woman, and how by breaking free of labels, expectations and timelines, women can lead bigger, richer lives.
Dorcas Gwata The Street Clinic Picador, 12 February, hb, £18.99, 9781035006915
The remarkable Gwata is an NHS mental health nurse who works with vulnerable young people. In this eye-opening, sometimes shocking and always deeply compassionate book, she introduces 10 young Londoners she has come to know as they try to navigate lives full of perils and deprivation.
Gisèle Pelicot, Natasha Lehrer and Ruth Diver (trans) A Hymn to Life The Bodley Head, 17 February, hb, £22, 9781847928962
In 2024, Pelicot inspired millions with her courage and dignity as she chose to waive her right to anonymity in her fight for justice against her husband and the 50 other men accused of her sexual assault. In this memoir she tells her story for the first time in a “rallying call” for shame to change sides in cases of sexual abuse.
Sasha Bonét The Waterbearers Merky Books, 19 February, pb, £16.99, 9781529979640
Exploring the trials and triumphs of Black matriarchy as she navigates motherhood, this alluring memoir by a renowned young US writer looks back on the lives of her grandmother Betty Jean, who raised 11 children alone, and that of her mother Mama Connie, who vowed to live differently but did not.
Poorna Bell She Wanted More Leap, 19 February, hb, £16.99, 9781785122835
Part memoir, part exploration, this new book from the fabulous Bell is a call-to-arms for women of all ages to reject the belief that we should be grateful for what we have been given. Including interviews with
the likes of Hollie McNish, Marian Keyes, Asma Khan and Mariella Frostrup, it suggests we should demand more in order to claim a fundamental part of ourselves.
Jonathan Tepper Shooting Up Constable, 19 February, hb, £25, 9781408724958
Tepper grew up in a family of American missionaries in San Blas, a crime and heroin hotspot neighbourhood of Madrid. This memoir of love, loss and overcoming childhood trauma and grief is set partly against the backdrop of the AIDS epidemic.
Loubna Mrie Defiance Virago Press, 24 February, hb, £18.99, 9780349013367
Raised to be loyal to the brutal regime of Bashar al-Assad in Syria, Mrie joined the resistance as a young woman. As she relates in this “unforgettable” memoir, her defiance came at devastating cost, including the murder of her mother and the kidnapping and execution of her US aid-worker partner.
Prue Leith
Being Old… and Learning to Love It! Octopus Publishing Group, 26 February, hb, £20, 9781804193747
“So much more than a memoir,” this is a “spirited canter” through the musings of 85-year- old Dame Prue on the subject of ageing well with all its triumphs, trials and tribulations. Takes in health, beauty, fashion, business, work, widowhood, finding love again, decorating, downsizing, assisted dying and more.
Rosie Kelly Smith Mother to Mother Seven Dials, 26 February, hb, £22, 9781399634731
Smith co-hosts the successful What If? podcast with her mother Lorraine Kelly. This is her “gloriously comforting and extremely honest” guide to motherhood, including what we might learn about parenting from our own mums.
Maya Jordan Chopsy September Publishing, 26 February, pb, £14.99, 9780715656136
Written in a distinctive voice, this is a candid,
funny and sometimes furious account by a working-class woman and wheelchair user of a life lived in triumphant opposition to limitations and systemic inequalities.
Paul Morley Love Magic Power Danger Bliss Faber & Faber, 26 February, hb, £25, 9780571379248
Blending biography, cultural history and artistic meditation, this explores the history of the 20th-century avant-garde movement through the prism of Yoko Ono, the inspiring, provocative figure “who became its most misunderstood icon”.
Justine Picardie Fashioning the Crown Faber & Faber, 26 February, hb, £25, 9780571394289
Published ahead of the centenary of the Queen’s birth and focusing on royal dress, this richly illustrated book uncovers the hidden history of the Crown and how it survived a tumultuous 20th century.
Andrew Wilson I Wanna Be Loved By You Simon & Schuster, 26 February, hb, £25, 9781398513440
Featuring a wealth of unpublished material, this “revealing and nuanced” biography of Marilyn Monroe presents her in a “startling new light” through 100 snapshots from throughout her life.
Fatima Bhutto The Hour of the Wolf Daunt Originals, 26 February, pb, £10.99, 9781917092319
Bhutto was only a teenager when her beloved father was murdered in Pakistan. So as an adult she longed to build a happy family life but fell into a coercive relationship with a seemingly charming man. Blending myth, literature, art and more, this memoir tells the alluring story of how she freed herself, with Coco, her loyal Jack Russell terrier ever by her side.
Current Affairs
Hazel Sheffield Frontierlands Torva, 5 February, hb, £20, 9781911709312
“Inspiring” new book about Britain’s forgotten and abandoned places, the opportunities they present for business and communities, and how they can help us face the challenges of climate change.
Kate Pickett
The Good Society The Bodley Head, 5 February, hb, £22, 9781847928726
The co-author of The Spirit Level explains how a fairer, healthier, more caring and sustainable society is entirely within our grasp as she presents a roadmap for change that draws on the latest findings from social science.
Amber Husain Tell Me How You Eat Hutchinson Heinemann, 5 February, hb, £18.99, 9781529154337
Drawing on her own experience of eating disorder, cultural critic Husain delves into the history of the relationship between food and empowerment, taking in historic feasts and fasts, including those of the Suffragettes, the Black Panthers, early vegetarians and contemporary Palestinian protesters.
Rana Dasgupta After Nations William Collins, 26 February, hb, £30, 9780008639747
Emerging partly from the prize-winning author’s 2018 essay for the Guardian entitled The Demise of the Nation State, this sweeping global history argues that it is not countries themselves that are in crisis, but the nation state system they operate under.
General History
Jochen Hellbeck World Enemy No. 1 Picador, 5 February, hb, £30, 9781529038927
Drawing on newly declassified archives, as well as testimonies, diaries and more from soldiers and civilians, this suggests that it was not the Western powers that Nazi Germany viewed as the greatest threat to its existence but Soviet Russia, the “most powerful Jewish organisation in the world”.
Frank Dikötter Red Dawn Over China Bloomsbury Publishing, 12 February, hb, £30, 9781526670700
The renowned China historian with a “commanding” new history of China’s path to Communism, showing “with great narrative verve” how unlikely the Party’s victory actually was, and the
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