CRAIG BROWN – our chief critic’s top books of 2017
Only a handful of great artists have been able to write and to paint with equal brilliance, but David Jones was one, and Edward Lear another. By chance, each was the subject of a fine biography this year.
Jenny Uglow’s Mr Lear: A Life Of Art And Nonsense (Faber £25) was a sharp, loving portrait of the peculiarly English genius, Edward Lear.
His life might so easily have been given over to self-pity or misery. He suffered from epilepsy, often having several fits a day. In those days it was considered shameful, so whenever he felt a fit coming on, he retreated into solitude, shutting the door behind him. Even close friends had no idea of his affliction. ‘It is wonderful that these fits have never been discovered,’ he wrote in old age.
Jenny Uglow’s Mr Lear: A Life Of Art And Nonsense (Faber £25); David Jones: Engraver, Soldier, Painter, Poet (Jonathan Cape £25) by Thomas Dilworth
His sense of solitude was intensified by his mother’s indifference to him – he was the youngest of her 21 children – and something appalling, possibly sexual abuse, from which he had suffered aged ten.
Throughout his life, he battled against depression. ‘The morbids,’ he said, ‘are not allowed.’ Instead, he used his genius to transform despair and muddle into art, creating beauty and laughter out of nonsense. By doing so, he changed the way we see the world. Small wonder that The Owl And The Pussycat was recently voted Britain’s favourite poem.
He was prodigiously gifted: he is equally renowned as a painter of landscapes and birds, a creator of nonsense poems, and the drawer of the delightful, slightly frightening and wholly original cartoons that accompany them. He was also an accomplished composer and musician.
Jenny Uglow has written a wonderful portrait of this deeply sympathetic man. She is particularly adept at uncovering psychological clues buried in his verse. ‘Every time one returns to the limericks,’ she writes, ‘one can find something new: the gap between the characters, never quite touching, the action suspended in time; the darkness and anger.’
Mr Lear: A Life Of Art And Nonsense is also generously published, with plenty of colour illustrations, and the nonsense verse and accompanying drawings slotted into the text at just the right moments: all in all, a fitting monument to one of the most remarkable Englishmen who ever lived.
My other favourite biography is of the Welsh painter and poet David Jones, who was born in Brockley, south London in 1895 and died, penniless, in a residential home in Harrow, north-west London in 1974. Other poets revered him. ‘Your work makes me feel very small and madly jealous,’ said WH Auden, and Dylan Thomas once remarked, ‘I would like to have done anything as good as David Jones has done.’
Thomas Dilworth has devoted his life to the appreciation of the great, neglected genius, and David Jones: Engraver, Soldier, Painter, Poet (Jonathan Cape £25) has a depth of thought and feeling lacking in many slicker literary biographies.
In World War I Jones served longer on the front – 117 weeks – than any other British writer, surviving both the Somme and Passchendaele. He was profoundly damaged by the experience, terrified to the end of his life by loud noises and open spaces. But, like Lear, through talent and willpower he transformed his distress into a thing of beauty. His paintings and his poetry are kaleidoscopic explosions of consciousness, at one and the same time earthy and mystical.
MEMOIR
‘Molly’s Game’
Molly Bloom
William Collins £8.99
Molly Bloom lured Leonardo DiCaprio and Ben Affleck into an illegal gambling den and hit the jackpot – until the FBI called her bluff. Now, in her own words, read the inside story of Hollywood’s $100m poker queen
Balancing Acts
Nicholas Hytner
Jonathan Cape £20
Vivid and gossipy account of the author’s 12 years as artistic director of the National Theatre, during which time he staged smash hits such as The History Boys, War Horse and His Dark Materials.
An Odyssey
Daniel Mendelsohn
William Collins £18.99
Mendelsohn is a classics scholar who teaches a course in Homer’s Odyssey to 19-year-olds. One year, his crotchety 81-year-old father decides to take the course. Brilliant family memoir that also illuminates the ancient world.
Balancing Acts by Nicholas Hytner; An Odyssey by Daniel Mendelsohn
This Is Going To Hurt
Adam Kay
Picador £16.99
The hilarious and sometimes shocking diaries of a former junior doctor – now a comedy writer and performer – who spent six years working in obstetrics and gynaecology for the NHS. You’ll laugh, you’ll cry, you’ll feel a little bit nauseous.
Things Can Only Get Worse?
John O’Farrell
Doubleday £16.99
This wry, funny account of the trials and tribulations of being a Labour supporter over the last 20 years (a sequel to Things Can Only Get Better) will be enjoyed by readers of all political stripes.
This Is Going To Hurt by Adam Kay; Things Can Only Get Worse? by John O’Farrell
How Not To Be A Boy by Robert Webb
How Not To Be A Boy
Robert Webb
Canongate £16.99
Part memoir, part critique of stereotypical masculinity, the Peep Show star’s thought-provoking account of his life has been one of the hits of the year.
FICTION
Sleeping Beauties
Stephen and Owen King
Hodder & Stoughton £20
Father and son team up for a horror tale in which women fall into strangely deep sleeps. But this is no fairy tale: disturb them and they become feral furies. Humour and gender politics spice a paranormal parable.
How Hard Can It Be?
Allison Pearson
Borough Press £14.99
Kate Reddy is eyeballing the big 5-0 while grappling with a Lycra-clad hubby, ageing parents, and teens intent on learning the hard way about the perils of (anti-) social media. Trenchant hilarity ensues.
The Betrayal by Kate Furnivall; How Hard Can It Be? by Allison Pearson
The Good Pilot Peter Woodhouse by Alexander McCall Smith; A Pocketful Of Crows by Joanne M Harris
Fools And Mortals
Bernard Cornwell
HarperCollins £20
Class-act Cornwell’s latest historical caper centres on Shakespeare’s real-life baby brother, a chippy actor named Richard. When a new script by William is stolen, Richard finds himself the prime suspect. Cue conflict, betrayal and conspiracies aplenty.
The Good Pilot Peter Woodhouse
Alexander McCall Smith
Polygon £14.99
Land girl Val is smitten when the Yanks arrive at a nearby airfield. But young airman Mike must share her heart with one Peter Woodhouse – a dog who becomes the American squad’s mascot. When Mike’s plane is shot down over Holland, Peter Woodhouse is with him. Period pet lit from a pro.
The Break
Marian Keyes
Michael Joseph £20
A frank and funny look at a long marriage that’s about to hit the skids. Forty-something Amy had always assumed she was happy but when Hugh announces that he’s taking a six-month break from their marriage and kids, she’s forced to rethink.
The Break by Marian Keyes; Fools And Mortals by Bernard Cornwell
Annie’s Christmas By The Sea by Liz Eeles; Origin by Dan Brown
The Betrayal
Kate Furnivall
Simon & Schuster £7.99
Historical epic played out against the backdrop of Paris in the late Thirties. Twin heroines Romy, a fast-living aviatrix, and Florence, a socialite, have tragedy in their past and with war looming, their future looks perilous.
A Pocketful Of Crows
Joanne M Harris
Gollancz £12.99
Mystery and magic propel this eerie, lyrical fairy tale, inspired by an ancient ballad and tethered to the changing seasons. Over the course of a year its heroine falls in love, is betrayed, and then must find a way back to herself.
A Column Of Fire
Ken Follett
Macmillan £20
Ned Willard is a Protestant whose mission to woo Catholic Margery Fitzgerald unfolds in tandem with events like the defeat of the Spanish Armada and the Gunpowder Plot. It’s a sumptuous slice of swashbuckling Elizabethan romance.
Origin
Dan Brown
Bantam Press £20
Robert Langdon’s fifth outing finds him embroiled in an engagingly loopy plot. His ex-student Edmond Kirsch has become a billionaire computer whiz, and is all set to reveal a discovery that will spell the end of religion, when a nefarious network intervenes.
Annie’s Christmas By The Sea
Liz Eeles
Bookouture £7.99
Eeles’ eponymous heroine is happily ensconced with her great-aunt Alice and dishy boyfriend Josh, but when the father she’s never met turns up, her unknown half-sister in tow, Annie’s cosy Cornish idyll is threatened. Family secrets, festive romance and plenty of laughter.
ILLUSTRATED
Harper’s Bazaar: 150 Years
Abrams £40
A sumptuous collection of some of the celebrated fashion magazine’s most stunning and iconic photographs.
Vinyl. Album. Cover. Art. The Complete Hipgnosis Catalogue
Thames and Hudson £24.95
Half of the album covers in most people’s collections were conceived of and shot by Hipgnosis. This brings together the brilliant work the design outfit created for Pink Floyd, Led Zeppelin, Paul McCartney and many others.
Vinyl. Album. Cover. Art. The Complete Hipgnosis Catalogue, Thames and Hudson £24.95; Obama: An Intimate Portrait, Pete Souza
Obama: An Intimate Portrait
Pete Souza
Allen Lane £40
Pictorial history of Barack Obama’s presidency by his chief White House photographer documenting both public and behind-the-scenes moments.
Charles Rennie Mackintosh and the Art of the Four
Roger Billcliffe
Frances Lincoln £40
Beautifully illustrated account of the work of the artists at the heart of the influential Glasgow Style.
Blue Planet II
James Honeyborne and Mark Brownlow
BBC Books £25
This companion book to the TV series about ocean life is packed with breathtaking images.
LITERARY FICTION
Winter
Ali Smith
Hamish Hamilton £18.99
How about this for an eclectic Christmas house party: a nature blogger, his barmy mum, his equally barmy aunt and the Croatian lesbian he’s paid to act the part of girlfriend. When this mismatched quartet gathers in a rambling house in Cornwall, the stage is set for big-hearted, idiosyncratic entertainment.
Manhattan Beach
Jennifer Egan
Corsair £16.99
The Ziegfeld follies, the criminal underworld of Thirties New York City, WWII maritime missions – all are brought to life with irresistible intensity as heroine Anna Kerrigan toys with a suave gangster and pursues twin goals: becoming a deep-sea diver and solving the mystery of her missing father.
Winter by Ali Smith; Manhattan Beach by Jennifer Egan
Beautiful Animals
Lawrence Osborne
Hogarth £14.99
This complex, thrilling novel centres on Naomi Codrington, a young lawyer who befriends Samantha, a malleable American teenager, while summering with her father and stepmother on the Greek island of Hydra. When they find a Syrian refugee washed up on the shore, calamity comes rushing in.
Devil’s Day
Andrew Michael Hurley
John Murray £12.99
Set in the Lancashire moors, this impressive, memorably unsettling second novel tells the story of a young man returning to the farm where he grew up, with his pregnant wife in tow. Expect pastoral lyricism – snowstorms sweeping in across ancient landscape – spliced with gothic shivers.
Beautiful Animals by Lawrence Osborne; Devil’s Day by Andrew Michael Hurley
The Sparsholt Affair
Alan Hollinghurst
Picador £20
Unfolding over seven decades, and featuring a coterie of middle-class writers and painters, this is a beautifully observed, touchingly upbeat portrait of men and manners. After opening in wartime Oxford – an era of intense, unsatisfied yearnings, when scandal lurked in the wings – it edges into a more generous age.
The Burning Girl
Claire Messud
Fleet £16.99
From their second week at nursery school in small-town New England, darkly ringletted Juliet and white-blonde Cassie are as tight as twins. But as teenagers, they drift apart. Then Cassie goes missing. Lingeringly evocative, this is an indelible, heartfelt coming-of-age tale whose ample insights are braided with menace.
The Burning Girl by Claire Messud; The Sparsholt Affair by Alan Hollinghurst
THRILLERS
The Susan Effect
Peter Hoeg Harvill
Secker £16.99
The Danish author is back on form in this literary thriller, which revolves around a woman who has the power to make people tell her their secrets.
Sleep No More
P D James
Faber £10
Six sublime tales evoking the golden age of detective fiction, with settings ranging from a graveyard to a boarding school.
The Girl Before by J P Delaney; The Susan Effect by Peter Hoeg Harvill
Sleep No More by P D James; A Legacy Of Spies by John le Carré
The Girl Before
J P Delaney
Quercus £12.99
Jane is thrilled when she is accepted as a tenant for a house designed by a reclusive architect. But given the fate of the previous tenant, is her dream home really a nightmare in waiting?
Spook Street by Mick Herron
A Legacy Of Spies
John le Carré
Viking £20
A riveting novel that moves between East Germany during the Cold War and the legal terrors of contemporary London. Wonderful.
Spook Street
Mick Herron
John Murray £14.99
This fourth in Herron’s series of novels about Slough House, the department for disgraced spies, combines a terrorist attack, the murder of an old spymaster, and a mysterious fire to create a brilliantly plotted – and witty – addition.
CHILDREN’S BOOKS
(Illustrated books)
All The Way Home
Debi Gliori
Bloomsbury £12.99
Exquisitely illustrated by the author, a heart-warming snowy tale about a lost daddy penguin and his egg who find their way home with help from the Special Air Navigation Transport Authority.
Grandad’s Secret Giant
David Litchfield
Frances Lincoln £11.99
Billy’s grandad is always telling him stories about the giant who watches over the town. But Billy knows that the giant doesn’t really exist. A visually stunning book with a gentle lesson about acceptance and kindness.
The Secret Of The Purple Lake by Yaba Badoe; The Wizards Of Once by Cressida Cowell
Turtles All The Way Down by John Green; The Explorer by Katherine Rundell
The Turkey That Voted For Christmas
Madeleine Cook
Oxford £6.99
A festive tale with a twist as plucky Timmy the turkey launches a campaign to persuade the reluctant residents of Pear Tree Farm to vote ‘yes’ to Christmas. Look out for the chirpy robin in Samara Hardy’s colourful illustrations.
The Koala Who Could
Rachel Bright
Orchard £6.99
Bright’s fun rhyming narrative is perfectly complemented by Jim Field’s bold illustrations in an inspiring story about Kevin the cautious koala who learns that stepping outside your comfort zone can lead to big adventures.
The Stone Bird
Jenny McCartney
Andersen Press £11.99
Let your imagination soar with this charming debut book – delightfully illustrated by Patrick Beson – about Eliza, who finds a stone egg on the beach. Can she persuade her mother it’s more than just a pebble?
(children’s novels)
The Koala Who Could by Rachel Bright; The Stone Bird by Jenny McCartney
The Wizards Of Once
Cressida Cowell
Hodder £12.99 7+
Another surefire hit for the How To Train Your Dragon author. Set in an ancient Britain where magical Wizards have been taught to hate non-magical Warriors, it’s action-packed, darkly atmospheric and laugh-out-loud funny.
Raptors Of Paradise
Jay Jay Burridge
Supersaurs £10.99 9+
What if dinosaurs never died out? This new series opens with Bea and her grandmother’s arrival on a remote island. Reluctant readers will love the accompanying app, which brings the book’s striking black-and-white illustrations to life.
The Secret Of The Purple Lake
Yaba Badoe
Cassava Republic Press £7.99 10+
Mermaids, magical elephants and singing walruses all feature in Badoe’s enchanting collection of five interlinked fables which span the globe from a Ghanian fishing village to ancient Thailand.
Turtles All The Way Down
John Green
Penguin £14.99 13+
Green fans will be familiar with the themes of first love and teenage friendships in his witty latest novel. Seen through the prism of 16-year-old Aza’s OCD, it’s ostensibly a detective story, following Aza and her friend Daisy’s search for an elusive missing billionaire.
The Explorer
Katherine Rundell
Bloomsbury £12.99 8+
Fred’s dreams of becoming an explorer are realised when he and three other children are the only survivors of an Amazonian plane crash. Rundell’s lush descriptions only enhance the plot of this wildly exciting adventure story
STOCKING FILLERS
Michael Heath’s The Battle For Britain
Wilkinson Publishing £23.50
The Mail on Sunday’s political cartoonist Michael Heath has been contributing his hilarious drawings to newspaper and magazines for more than six decades. This is a collection of strips from his brilliant state-of-the-nation series The Battle For Britain.
The Story of the Great British Bake Off
Anita Singh
Anima £20
Popping the cherry – the first unofficial history of everyone’s favourite innuendo-laden competitive baking show.
Baking with Kafka
Tom Gauld
Canongate £12.99
A collection of brilliantly off-the-wall cartoons. Ever wondered what War and Peace clickbait looks like? Or Machiavelli’s month planner? Gauld can help.
The Mail on Sunday’s political cartoonist Michael Heath has been contributing his hilarious drawings to newspaper and magazines for more than six decades
Christmas, A Biography by Judith Flanders; The Story of the Great British Bake Off by Anita Singh
Pears Cyclopaedia
Penguin £25
The 126th edition of this eclectic almanac, ‘the Swiss Army Knife of reference books’, is to be the last, seen off by the internet. It is still the perfect book for the intellectually curious to dip into at random.
Christmas, A Biography
Judith Flanders
Picador £14.99
A history of Christmas by an acclaimed author, who sheds light on the myths, history and legends of the season.
Pears Cyclopaedia by Penguin £25; Christmas, A Biography by Judith Flanders
How To…
Quercus £9.99
This quirky new series provides short guides to various skills, each written by an expert in the field. For example, James Rhodes with How To Play The Piano and Macrus do Sautoy with How To Count To Infinity.
HISTORY
Last Hope Island
Lynne Olson
Scribe £25
Polish code-breakers; Czech pilots; French spies – this is the terrific, swashbuckling story of the refugees who escaped to Britain and joined the fight against fascism when the Nazis swept through Europe.
Victorians Undone
Kathryn Hughes
Fourth Estate £20
A startlingly original examination of Victorian life using the physical traits of prominent figures such as Charles Dickens, George Eliot and Queen Victoria herself as its starting point.
The Templars by Dan Jones; To Catch a King by Charles Spencer
The Templars
Dan Jones
Head Of Zeus £25
Blood and guts history of the ruthless, religious military order – ‘God’s holy warriors’ – that rose to prominence in the 12th century, protecting Christian pilgrims to Jerusalem, but eventually became too powerful for its own good.
Belonging
Simon Schama
Bodley Head £25
The second part of Schama’s epic three-volume history of the Jews spans four centuries, beginning with their expulsion from Spain in 1492 and ending with the prospect of a Jewish homeland.
To Catch a King
Charles Spencer
William Collins £20
Pacey account of the extraordinary episode in 1651 when the future Charles II spent six weeks on the run from Cromwell’s men. He used disguises, hid in ditches and trees, and even witnessed a village celebrating the fake news of his death.
NATURAL HISTORY
Tamed and Untamed
Sy Montgomery and Elizabeth Marshall Thomas
Chelsea Green £18.99
A charming collection of short, sometimes funny and occasionally eccentric essays – which originally appeared as columns in an American newspaper – on a wide variety of animals from water bears to worms, domestic pets to hawks and lions.
The Unexpected Truth about Animals
Lucy Cooke
Doubleday £16.99
Zooologst and TV presenter presenter Lucy Cooke examines the myths surrounding sloths, hyenas, bats, pandas, chimps and a myriad other beasts. Did you know that pandas are virile studs or that sloths don’t really sleep that much? Fascinating.
The Unexpected Truth about Animals by Lucy Cooke; The Secret Life of the Owl by John Lewis-Stempel
The Secret Life of the Owl
John Lewis-Stempel
Doubleday £7.99
An essay-length portrait by one of our finest nature writers of a bird that has fascinated humans for millennia.
Adventures of a Young Naturalist
David Attenborough
Two Roads £25
In 1954, a promising young TV producer was sent around the world to find rare animals for a joint BBC-London Zoo venture. His accounts of his travels, first published in the Fifties, are here reproduced in a beautiful new edition, with an introduction by Attenborough.
Tamed
Alice Roberts
Hutchinson £20
The story of ten different species – including dogs, apples, wheat and cattle – and how their domestication or cultivation affected humans. This is the sort of deep-dive, broad-brush history that will appeal fo fans of Jared Diamond and Yuval Noah Harari.
BIOGRAPHY
Fasting and Feasting
Adam Federman
Chelsea Green Publishing £20
The pioneering food writer Patience Gray – less well known than her contemporary Elizabeth David – lived a remarkable and unconventional life, and this biography highlights the full extent of her influence.
Anthony Powell
Hilary Spurling
Hamish Hamilton £25
Powell’s novel sequence A Dance To The Music Of Time inspires fanatical devotion from some, puzzled indifference from others. But what makes this life so readable are Spurling’s wonderfully vivid pen-portraits of Powell’s famous aquaintances.
Dylan Jones’s biography (see below) is an engrossing book based on the testimonies of some 150 of Bowie’s colleagues
Anthony Powell by Hilary Spurling; The Billion Dollar Spy by David E Hoffman
The Billion Dollar Spy
David E Hoffman
Icon £12.99
Adolf Tolkachev, an engineer in a Soviet military design laboratory, was the CIA’s most successful spy within the USSR in the later Cold War. This is a wonderfully three-dimensional portrait of ‘Agent Sphere’ – his tastes, fears, obsessions, motives, and above all, his isolation.
Letters of Sylvia Plath Volume I: 1940–1956
Edited by Peter K Steinberg and Karen Kukil
Faber £35
The remarkable first volume of the complete collection of Sylvia Plath’s letters – most never seen before – covers the early years of the poet’s life, ending with her marriage to Ted Hughes in 1956, seven years before her suicide.
Letters of Sylvia Plath Volume I: 1940–1956, Edited by Peter K Steinberg and Karen Kukil; Fasting and Feasting by Adam Federman
David Bowie by Dylan Jones
MUSIC
Sticky Fingers
Joe Hagan
Canongate £25
Jann Wenner founded Rolling Stone in 1967 when he was 21. For decades, the biggest names in the music business either courted him because they wanted to be in his magazine, or reviled him because they didn’t like what had been written about them. This warts-and-all biography dishes the dirt.
David Bowie
Dylan Jones
Preface £20
The GQ editor’s engrossing book is based on the testimonies of some 150 of Bowie’s colleagues, friends and loved ones, as well as his own interviews with the star.
Year of Wonder
Clemency Burton-Hill
Headline £30
The violinist and BBC Radio 3 presenter chooses one piece of classical music for every day of the year and provides a brief introduction to each. Her purpose is to ‘extend a hand to those who feel that the world of classical music is a party to which they haven’t been invited’. Her enthusiasm leaps off the page.
Lou Reed A Life
Anthony DeCurtis
John Murray £25
DeCurtis, a friend of the Velvet Underground star, doesn’t shy away from Reed’s ugly side – the physical abuse of his first wife, the drugs, the gargantuan ego – but he’s also great on the music, both the good stuff… and the bad.
COOKBOOKS
The Plagiarist In The Kitchen
Jonathan Meades
Unbound £20
Meades is one of our most eloquent and excellent iconoclasts, and he describes this as an ‘anti-cookbook, a recipe book that is also an explicit paean to the avoidance of culinary originality.’ Don’t be fooled. Although the prose is as opinionated and elegant as you’d expect, this is a brilliant, and magnificently old-fashioned, cookbook.
Adventures Of A Terribly Greedy Girl
Kay Plunkett-Hogge
Mitchell Beazley £12.99
Part cookbook, part memoir of a life well spent, Plunkett-Hogge sure has lived. Brought up in Bangkok and Brockley, she’s also had sojourns in the film and model industry. The prose sparkles, and the recipes, particularly the Thai ones, are some of the best I’ve cooked. A culinary joy, and a literary one too.
Japaneasy
Tim Anderson
Hardie Grant £20
Anderson manages to demystify the art of Japanese cooking without ever dumbing down or losing its heart or soul. His writing is clear and opinionated, and his recipes mainly simple and straightforward. It’s a love letter to this great cuisine, and an essential guide and introduction.
The Sportsman
Stephen Harris
Phaidon £29.95
This handsome volume provides everything you could possibly want from a serious cookbook. A sense of place, history and character, along with fine writing, brilliant recipes, and chapters of Kentish terroir too. A book every bit as great as the restaurant.
Kaukasis
Olia Hercules
Mitchell Beazley £25
A beautiful, often lyrical journey around the Caucasus, Georgia, Azerbajian and beyond, Hercules takes the reader to lands way beyond the usual culinary beat. The pictures are sumptuous, the stories fascinating, and the recipes exotic and homely.
Tom Parker Bowles
SPORT
Tom Simpson: Bird on the Wire
Andy McGrath
Bloomsbury £36
Cyclist Simpson was the first Briton to win the men’s World Championships and to wear the yellow leader’s jersey at the Tour de France, but his achievements have been overshadowed by his dramatic death on Mount Ventoux during the 1967 Tour. McGrath redresses the balance.
The Captain Class by Sam Walker; How To Build A Car by Adrian Newey
How To Build A Car
Adrian Newey
HarperCollins £20
Adrian Newey is widely regarded as the best F1 designer of modern times. Nigel Mansell, Damon Hill and Sebastian Vettel all drove his designs to the world title. In this gripping memoir, he reveals the highs and lows of his race to the top.
Tom Simpson: Bird on the Wire by Andy McGrath
The Captain Class
Sam Walker
Elbury £20
What distinguishes a great sports team from a merely good one? What is the ‘DNA of greatness’. Walker, a Wall Street Journal writer, thinks he knows, and explains his theory in this entertaining sports/leadership hybrid.
He may have been the greatest but he certainly wasn’t a saint
A Clear Blue Sky
Jonny Bairstow
HarperCollins £20
Bairstow was just eight when his father David, also a cricketer for Yorkshire and England, took his own life. This is Jonny’s moving tribute to his dad and his account of how he overcame the tragedy.
Ali: A Life
Jonathan Eig
Simon & Schuster £25
He may have been the greatest but he certainly wasn’t a saint. The latest biography of the legendary athlete, based on more than 200 interviews, paints a portrait of his life in its entirety.