Highlights of the Season
on s of the season
Caroline’s Highlights continue overleaf
Biography & Memoirs
Sara Wheeler Jan Morris: A Life Faber & Faber, 9 April, hb, £25, 9780571379453
By renowned travel writer and biographer Wheeler, this is the authorised biography of famous historian and travel writer Jan Morris who died in 2020. Skilfully capturing the complexity of her character and its mosaic of contradictions, Wheeler charts Morris’ long and prolific writing life. A Welsh nationalist who was not Welsh, a preacher of kindness with a cruel side, Morris is also famous for her gender transition from James to Jan, and Wheeler handles the complexities of this with sensitivity but also clear-eyed detachment. The result is a scintillating story of longing, travel and never quite reaching home.
Biography & Memoirs
Bethany Handley My Body Is a Meadow Headline Press, 7 May, hb, £20, 9781035427505
Gifted Welsh poet and devotee of the great outdoors Handley is also a wheelchair user. Both passionate and political, this memoir delivers a galvanising call for us to rethink how we live among nature and with each other. She invites readers to wheel alongside her as she explores ableism, climate justice and what nature means to her. Unearthing parallels between land ownership and privatised healthcare, loss of biodiversity and social marginalisation, she sets out what nature can teach us about inclusion and interdependence. It is a rallying cry for us to stop gatekeeping nature and work together to make it open to everyone.
Health, Self-Help & Parenting
Sharon Blackie Ripening September Publishing, 14 May, hb, £20, 9781914613524
“Fairy tales matter because at the heart of every one of them is transformation.” Psychologist, mythologist and author Blackie’s previous books, including If Women Rose Rooted and Hagitude, have become modern classics. In this much-anticipated new work, Blackie examines the role of fairy tales in anchoring women in a world in which old certainties seem to be crumbling. Drawing on stories from a wide variety of eras and cultures, she argues that such ancient tales and their heroines offer transformative insights for today, showing women ways to thrive even “with catastrophe at their heels”.
Current Affairs
Sally Hayden This Is Also a Love Story Fourth Estate, 21 May, hb, £20, 9780008623265
Described by Sally Rooney as “the most important work of contemporary reporting I have ever read”, Hayden’s My Fourth Time, We Drowned is a seminal account of the refugee crisis, which deservedly won the Orwell Prize and was shortlisted for the Baillie Gifford Prize. In this new book she re-examines catastrophe through the many love stories she has encountered; from a group of Syrian women who have tirelessly searched for their missing spouses and children, while launching a call for justice; to a couple separated by the Russian invasion of Ukraine. In the process she captures the human capacity for love and connection against all odds.
Skilfully capturing the complexity of Morris” character and its mosaic of contradictions
Spring/Summer 2026
A rallying cry for us to stop gatekeeping nature and work together to make it open to everyone
Blackie examines the role of fairy tales in anchoring women in a world in which old certainties seem to be crumbling
Music
Biography & Memoirs
Kayo Chingonyi Prodigal Fourth Estate, 2 July, hb, £16.99, 9780008497965
Sathnam Sanghera Tonight the Music Seems So Loud
Picador, 4 June, hb, £22, 9781035063871
Hayden re-examines catastrophe through the many love stories she has encountered
Over the past several years, Sanghera has been rightly celebrated for his revisionist books about the British Empire. His next work is somewhat different: a “brilliantly original” biography exploring the extraordinary life, and times of George Michael. We are promised a kaleidoscopic portrait of one of Britain’s most beloved musicians and an account of a strange and turbulent period of recent history. Sanghera explores the connection between music and politics, exposes what secrecy does to the soul, and reveals how fame rots the sense of self. Throughout it all, he captures Michael, “joyfully and poignantly”, and in all his musical glory.
In this extraordinary- sounding memoir, Dylan Thomas Prize-winning poet, Chingonyi recalls being smuggled out of Zambia in 1993 at the age of six after his father’s death, onto a plane bound for Newcastle. Soon afterwards he learns that his father died from an HIV-related illness, and later he becomes a carer to his mother as the same virus takes her too. In 2017, now a celebrated young poet, he realises that it is time to go back to Zambia. He tells the story of that return, reflecting on the healing power of music, poetry and love, and on the immigrant experience of “filling in the gaps”.
Chingonyi recalls being smuggled out of Zambia in 1993 at the age of six after his father’s death
09
GARY DOAK
RACHEL MEAGHER
SMART BANDA
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