Billionaire tycoon tells me the secret reason he refuses to marry beautiful girlfriend 29 years his junior... as Ewan McGregor reveals his very embarrassing star encounter: RICHARD EDEN'S DIARY
Were the comedienne Caroline Aherne still alive, she would, as TV's Mrs Merton, no doubt ask Modesta Vzesniauskaite: 'So, what first attracted you to the billionaire John Caudwell?'
After all, at the age of 72, the founder of Phones4U seems an unlikely match for the beautiful Lithuanian cyclist 29 years his junior.
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The Independent
34 minutes ago
- The Independent
The best that Bezos' money can buy: A wedding for the ages in timeless Venice
The Italian city of Venice was making waves Friday with the most anticipated wedding of 2025 — that of billionaire Jeff Bezos and his fiancée Lauren Sánchez. The sky itself is no limit for this couple who has traveled into space, and expectations are about as high. One of the world's most-enchanting cities as backdrop? Check. Star-studded guestlist and tabloid buzz? Of course. Local flavor? You bet. Beyond that, the team of the world's fourth-richest man has kept details under wraps. Still, whispers point to events spread across the lagoon city, adding complexity to what would have been a massive logistical undertaking even on dry land. On Thursday, dozens of private jets touched down at Venice's airport as yachts pulled into the city's famed waterways. Aboard were athletes, celebrities, influencers and business leaders, converging to revel in extravagance that is as much a testament to the couple's love as to their extraordinary wealth. The heady hoopla recalled the 2014 wedding in Venice of actor George Clooney to human rights lawyer Amal Alamuddin, when adoring crowds lined the canals and hundreds of well-wishers gathered outside City Hall. Not so for these nuptials, which have become a lightning rod for protests. Still, any desire to dampen the prevailing fever pitch has yet to materialize. Instead, the glitterati were set to party, and the paparazzi jostling for glimpses of the gilded gala. Whatever happens, it will be a wedding for the ages. Logistics and costs Venice is famed for its network of canals, where gondoliers croon for lovestruck couples and even ambulances are aquatic. But water transport of everything from bouquets to guests makes Venice among the world's most challenging cities for a party, according to Jack Ezon, CEO of luxury travel advisory and event planner Embark Beyond. 'It's a very tight-knit community; everyone there knows everyone, and you need to work with the right people,' said Ezon, whose company has put on a dozen high-end events in Venice. "There's very tight control, especially on movement there with boats.' It at least triples the cost versus staging the same soiree in Rome or Florence, he said. Veneto Gov. Luca Zaia was first to give an estimated tally for the Bezos/Sánchez bash: He told reporters this week the most recent total he saw was between 40 and 48 million euros (up to $56 million). It's an eye-popping, jaw-dropping figure that's over 1,000 times the $36,000 average cost of American couples' weddings in 2025, according to wedding planning website Zola's annual report. Bezos' team has been tight-lipped about where these millions are going. When the youngest son of Asia's richest man married last July, performances by pop stars Rihanna and Justin Bieber pushed up the pricetag. 'How do you spend $40 million on a three- or four-day event?' Ezon said. 'You could bring headliners, A-list performers, great DJs from anywhere in the world. You could spend $2 million on an incredible glass tent that's only there for 10 hours, but it takes a month to build," or expand the celebration to local landmarks. There's no sign Sánchez and Bezos, the former CEO of Amazon, intend to take over any of Venice's tourist-thronged hotspots. Still, intense hand-wringing about the prospect prompted their wedding coordinator, Lanza & Baucina, to issue a rare statement calling those rumors false. On Thursday, a string of water taxis cut through the lagoon to bring Bezos, Sánchez and guests to the Madonna dell'Orto cloister as some onlookers cheered. Paparazzi followed in their own boats, trying to capture guests on camera — Oprah Winfrey, Kim Kardashian, Ivanka Trump, Tom Brady, Orlando Bloom — as police on jet skis patrolled. Local media have reported the couple will hold a ceremony Friday on San Giorgio island, across the lagoon basin from St. Mark's Square. Associated Press journalists circling the island Thursday saw workers assembling tents and private security personnel stationed at every pier, including a newly built one. Media have also reported a reception Saturday in the Arsenale, a former navy base best known as a primary venue for the Venice Bienalle. 'No Space' There are some who say these two should not be wed in this city. They characterize the wedding as a decadent display of wealth in a world with growing inequality, and argue it's a shining example of tourism taking precedence over residents' needs, particularly affordable housing and essential services. Venice is also one of the cities most vulnerable to rising sea levels from climate change. About a dozen Venetian organizations — including housing advocates, anti-cruise ship campaigners and university groups — are protesting under the banner 'No Space for Bezos,' a play on words referring to his space exploration company Blue Origin and the bride's recent space flight. Greenpeace unfurled a banner in St. Mark's Square denouncing Bezos for paying insufficient taxes. Activists floated a bald-headed Bezos-inspired mannequin down a Venice canal atop an Amazon delivery box, its hands clenching fake cash. Authorities — from Venice's mayor to the nation's tourism minister — have dismissed the outcry, saying it ignores the visibility and economic boost the wedding brings. 'There will be photos everywhere, social media will go wild over the bride's dress, over the ceremony,' Italy's tourism minister, Daniela Santanchè, told the AP. 'All of this translates into a massive free publicity campaign. In fact, because they will spend a lot of money, they will enrich Venice — our shopkeepers, artisans, restauranteurs, hotels. So it's a great opportunity both for spending and for promoting Italy in the world.' Philanthropy As Amazon's CEO, Bezos usually avoided the limelight, frequently delegating announcements and business updates to his executives. Today he has a net worth of $231 billion, according to Forbes. In 2019, he announced he was divorcing his first wife, MacKenzie Scott, just before the National Enquirer published a story about an affair with Sánchez, a former TV news anchor. Sánchez filed for divorce the day after Bezos' divorce was finalized. He stepped down as CEO in 2021, saying he wished to spend more time on side projects, including Blue Origin, The Washington Post, which he owns, and his philanthropic initiatives. Sitting beside Sánchez during an interview with CNN in 2022, he announced plans to give away the majority of his wealth during his lifetime. Last week, a Venetian environmental research association issued a statement saying Bezos' Earth Fund was supporting its work with an 'important donation.' CORILA, which seeks protection of the Venetian lagoon system, said contact began in April, well before any protests. ___ Biller reported from Rome. AP reporter Barbara Ortutay in San Francisco contributed to this report.
Times
40 minutes ago
- Times
Michael Gove on divorce, gay rumours, dating and the Camerons
Michael Gove has agreed to this interview nominally to plug his new podcast, which he says will be 'mischievous, right-wing, not always predictable' — core brand Gove — but we both know why I'm really here. His ex-wife, Sarah Vine, has just published her memoir, How Not to Be a Political Wife, garnering a gazillion column inches, and Gove wants either to brief his own version of events or surf the wash of her publicity wave. (Possibly both.) And, since I've already interviewed Vine at length, I now feel like a niche form of couples therapist — or Derek Batey, host of the Eighties game show Mr & Mrs. Gove is detained, so I sit for 20 minutes in his office at The Spectator taking in the bookish clutter, knackered furniture, depressing strip lights and a plastic fern in a pot. On his desk is a book of essays by Denis Healey — he's fascinated by the intellectual hinterland of Seventies politicians — and behind it is a silhouette of Churchill, the only thing he's unpacked. Although he became editor of the magazine last October, everything else, including a drinks cabinet of half-empty single malts, belonged to his predecessor, now a Times columnist, Fraser Nelson. Finally Gove, 57, materialises looking hassled, then is off again: 'So, so, so sorry, back in three minutes.' When he eventually settles beside me, looking slimmer than of late, he seems surprisingly nervous. Always articulate, 20 years in politics made him a fluent performer and navigator of interviewer bear traps, especially personal ones. But Vine's book has plunged his private self into public print and, although mainly warm and affectionate, she paints him as a prodigious drinker, social climber, absentee husband and distracted father tethered to the wheel of political ambition. Moreover, Gove must be wary that since I knew him and Vine (both former Times staff) until the mid 2010s, I've witnessed much of this for myself. So every Gove sentence is punctuated by loud, prolonged 'ahhhhhs' and 'ummmms' to buy time while he selects the precise (ie safest) word. Even so, he's incapable of dullness. When I suggest that as Spectator editor and the newly ennobled Lord Gove of Torry he has attained his final form, neither journalist nor politician but a synthesis of both, he says, 'I never expected really to be a peer, but I suppose it's a, ahhhh, sort of, ummm, capstone on a political career. It's a way of, ahhhhh, saying almost all the previous chapters have closed, but the story hasn't quite ended.' Then he adds, 'I don't know anything about golf, but being in the Lords is a bit like being a superannuated golf pro turning up to a pro-celeb tournament. Having played in the Open, now you're appearing with Russ Abbot.' I say I'm not sure how his noble friends will take that. 'Well, you know, it [the Lords] is a wonderful place, but the Commons …' Now on to the book, the Amazon status of which he's tracking so carefully — 'It's No 1 in political biographies!' — I feel he's worried it will steal the thunder of his own vaguely mooted memoir. Was it strange seeing his private life laid so bare? He says that given Vine, as a Daily Mail columnist, had already written so much about him, 'It's not quite out of a clear blue sky,' and in any case she has a right to her view: 'Sarah put up with a hell of a lot being married to me.' And while it was painful to recall upsetting moments, such as when the couple and their children were accosted on holiday in New York and told, 'Wankers like you shouldn't have kids,' none of it was 'a new shot through the heart'. Vine's thesis is that Gove strove to keep up with his far richer, posher fellow Tory modernisers, David Cameron and George Osborne, via affectations such as paying for his outer London house to have a more prestigious 0207 (ie central) phone number, learning how toffs pronounce 'Ascot' (ASS-cutt), and buying wine or cologne at fancy shops in St James's with royal warrants. Yet since in class terms David and Sam Cam never saw the parvenu Goves as equals, they were treated not as true friends but family retainers who, when no longer useful or biddable, could be coldly dispatched. • The Camerons froze me out too, but I didn't moan like Sarah Vine Although he won't explicitly contradict Vine's account — and reading her book pre-publication, he asked for no changes — he paints it as a rather broad brushstroke: 'I think the heuristic is an oversimplification of things, but it's not — what's the word? — untrue.' He claims no memory of the 0207 business, although says in London postcode terms, 'They [the Camerons] were the elves and we were the hobbits.' But his tastes were established 'before I ever got involved in politics, before I met David Cameron. And it's definitely the case that I gravitate towards, in terms of creature comforts, things that are establishment-coded. For example, you'd be more likely to find me in tweed than a denim jacket. Also, I like pedantry and … all the curious aspects of life in Britain and England.' As the adopted son of an Aberdeen fish merchant, he compares himself to Pip in Great Expectations, the lowly orphan who clambered up through society to become a gentleman. 'I think it's particularly a feature of having been adopted,' he says. 'I grew up in a house where there were books, but not many. My dad's favourite reading matter was Reader's Digest condensed books. My mum's was Catherine Cookson. I was spoddy, swotty, bookish from an early age, and so there was an element of being a cuckoo in the nest. And my sister — also adopted — is profoundly deaf. So there was a sense in my mind growing up that I had this intellect or curiosity that set me apart slightly from my family. Not in terms of feeling unloved — quite the opposite — but in terms of being slightly different as a sort of breed, you know? I had different interests, different characteristics.' (Of his biological family, whom he has never tried to trace to spare his adoptive parents pain, he will say only that it feels like an unanswered question.) Oxford contemporaries recall Gove wearing tweed suits bought in Oxfam for £1.50, already a young fogey. His politeness, self-deprecating wit and appetite for debate with those with whom he disagreed meant he was liked even by those on the left. Yet Gove had a strand of theatricality: he acted in plays, even a film, was a star debater, president of the Oxford Union and, before the term 'troll' was coined, wrote opinion pieces intended to provoke. Gove identifies with Alan Bennett, who chronicles the expanding gulf between himself and his working-class Leeds parents after he goes to Oxford. Gove's own family were proud their private-school scholarship son was entering a prestigious university, 'but, by definition, your interest in a variety of things creates a certain sort of distance. So for my dad, when he was alive, or for my mum now, having a drink would not involve a glass of wine. And drawing distinctions between bordeaux and burgundy would seem like a different life.' Fine wine, opera (especially Wagner), gambling at gentlemen's clubs and running with a fast, rich set who revelled in such pastimes were just, he says, things he enjoyed. If he were a truly determined social climber, he argues, wouldn't he feign other 'establishment-coded' passions for 'tennis, horse racing, property porn, which I have no interest in at all'? According to Vine, their inferior standing in Tory high command first became apparent when David Cameron moved Gove from education secretary to chief whip — a demotion and a pay cut to a job he hated — because Lynton Crosby's polling found his unpopularity with teachers an electoral drag. 'If anything,' Gove says, 'Sarah took it harder than I did at the time, although I definitely felt let down.' But while Vine smarted about a betrayal of friendship, Gove saw Cameron as 'a CEO saying, 'We've got to carry on making a profit and what you've been doing is not a profit centre, so I'm going to have to move you on. Otherwise the whole thing will sink. So, you know, suck it up.' ' Similarly, when Cameron decided to call the EU referendum he expected Gove to abandon his longstanding, deep-rooted Euroscepticism to support the PM's Remain position. 'His view was 'we' — as in the group of people in his leadership campaign, in modernising the Conservative Party — are a team and tribe, and the people who want us to leave the EU are the guys who generally got things wrong about how the Conservative Party needs to change. 'So you might agree with them on this issue, and it might be a really big issue, Michael, but these guys are only going to take the country and the Conservative Party back. So swallow your doubts on this. Just trust me and get with the programme.' ' But this time, Gove did not fall in line. What he regrets now, he says, is being 'insufficiently clear' to Cameron that he would campaign for Leave. 'Sarah is right,' he says, 'in that I often find it difficult — and I hope I find it easier now — when I disagree with someone and it's likely to be painful, to say what I really think.' He deferred telling Cameron his intention in the hope 'something would turn up to prevent an inevitable rupture'. Does he believe his friendship with Cameron was real, not merely political? 'Yes,' he says emphatically. But that friendship is over? 'Impaired, which is sort of a euphemism. Not the same, and I can completely understand why. He felt he'd earned the right, as the captain, to expect members of the team to recognise it was better for us all to hang together.' But Cameron, in his own memoir, accuses Gove of fundamental disloyalty, both over Brexit and for dramatically changing his mind about supporting Boris Johnson's 2016 leadership bid. Are you a disloyal person? 'No.' Do you still see Cameron? 'Infrequently, cordially. Remember we shared a cabinet table for a year. [When Cameron was Rishi Sunak's foreign secretary.] The last time I saw him was about three weeks ago, at a reception for the New Schools Network, and he couldn't have been nicer.' Gove admits his conflict-averse nature may surprise those who see him as 'a guy who crosses the road to have a fight … who can't see a controversy without joining on one side or the other'. But his distaste for shouty rows means he was ill suited either to be chief whip or (briefly and earlier) news editor at The Times. Vine, who is similarly anti-confrontational, depicts their marriage as quietly petering out rather than as a series of stormy battles. She describes how when they moved house in 2017, Gove totally disengaged, retreating to their bedroom to read, leaving his wife and mother-in-law to unpack. 'I think now I was depressed,' he says. (He'd just been sacked as justice secretary by Theresa May.) Nonetheless, it was pretty selfish. Has the book made him wish he'd done anything differently? 'Yes,' he says. 'Simply being more present. Being at home and with the family more, and then, when at home with the family, being there.' Not always distracted? 'Yes.' • Everything we've learnt from Sarah Vine's new book But isn't the truth that a ministerial career is simply more exciting than sitting at home with small children watching Peppa Pig? 'Politics is much more than a job — it's a crusade. You get involved in politics because things really matter. Now, people might say I'm deluded or that I got terrible things wrong. But you don't do it to pay the bills or because it's intellectually interesting — although it is. You're doing it to change things. So in my mind, a phone call unreturned, a submission unread, a speech unmade, a meeting postponed, were all opportunities to advance what we were doing. So if you're going to turn around how the country's prisons are run or change the school system, it's closer to being involved in a conflict than a job.' Vine and Gove's problem, he says, was lacking either extended family or a cushion of wealth to help them cope. Yet Cameron was famous for 'chillaxing', regular date nights, balancing his life. 'David was in that respect, as in so many, just a cut above,' Gove says, echoing the gushing terms in which Vine writes of Sam Cam. 'Better at politics, better at managing life. Most politicians don't have the degree of focus, self-discipline, consideration — the all in one package that David had. Whether I'm one of the worst, I don't know. But politics is littered with relationships that have undergone tremendous strain and gone wrong. And there will be different explanations for that — the male ego, the propensity of politicians to take risks, and other deformities that characterise people who are drawn into public life. But one of the things about David is that he's just a more effectively operating human being than most of us.' Gove makes government sound like dancing in The Red Shoes: passion turns into an unstoppable frenzy that ultimately destroys you. He lists the sundry pressures: the constant public scrutiny, so no MP 'can walk down the street and pick their nose'; the risk of a misspeak on breakfast TV, which 'for 24 hours — and it is only 24 hours — means you will be laughed at on social media'. Vine often notes Gove's heavy drinking, that he glugged half a bottle of whisky during the expenses scandal, was nearly sick on the Pope after a heavy night and (I've observed this at dinner myself) his unquenchable thirst for red wine. Vine told me she was once so concerned she sent him to the Mayr clinic in Austria, where he was told 'he has the liver of a baby'. Did he drink to combat stress? He swerves the question and says the reason he runs in the morning is because, 'Exercise clears mental space. I think for all sorts of people there will be different ways of coping — and I'm a Scot. But I'm not drinking at the moment.' (He does still smoke.) After the divorce in 2021, his life changed dramatically. While Vine lives with their daughter, Bea, 22, and son, Will, 20, both students, Gove moved initially to a grace and favour apartment for his own protection, since Ali Harbi Ali, the jihadist who murdered the Tory MP Sir David Amess, was found to have first stalked Gove as a potential target. Now he lives with Dr Lola Salem, 32, an Oxford lecturer in music and French. A trained opera singer who is, as a mutual friend puts it, 'even more combative and right-wing than Michael', she sounds like his perfect match. He says he'd rather be discreet about Salem. But, I say, you did snog her openly in J Sheekey fish restaurant. (A photo was passed on to the papers.) 'Manifestly,' he says. 'In my mind, the street is sniper's alley. But in a restaurant, you expect a certain amount of politeness.' Before meeting Salem at a Civic Future leadership conference, Gove tried the Bumble dating app. His experiences, he says, were fairly standard 'except for the aspect of being the notorious Michael Gove'. He had to prove to one woman it was really him by holding up a copy of that day's newspaper, hostage-style. He had a few pleasant dates without any mutual spark, but found the process 'fascinating … the pictures people choose, the descriptions they give themselves'. To the question, 'What does your online ad algorithm assume you are?' Gove replied, 'Loaded, but sadly that isn't true.' Before Vine, Gove had several serious girlfriends including the historian Amanda Foreman and Simone Kubes, now the Tory peer Baroness Finn. Even so, rumours still persist that Gove is a closeted gay man. Vine ascribes this to his many gay friends (he lived in Mayfair with the entrepreneur Ivan Massow and the former Tory MP Nick Boles) and his gay advisers, such as Henry Newman, plus his slightly camp taste for fripperies such as Geo F Trumper colognes. Gove adds, 'I also think people like the idea anyone in public life will have a kink or secret of some kind. So everyone from Peter Lilley to the current PM has had rumours spread about them. And this was one that latched onto me. I find it hilarious. But any protestation sounds like you're trying to cover something up.' Has he ever kissed a boy? 'No … except my son.' He seems happy to be outside politics, liberated from ministerial cars, using the Tube again, no longer walking with his head fixedly down. He goes into an excited reverie about the pleasures of people-watching, how amazed he is by the fashion dominance of 'athleisure wear'. Did he stand down as an MP last year because he knew when he lost Surrey Heath in the general election people would talk about 'staying up for Gove'? He admits 'that was at least one part of it', but he reckoned too that having angered over the years everyone from teachers to Boris fans he was an electoral liability. 'And also,' he says, 'I felt exhausted.' In the end, the Lib Dems won with a mighty 21 per cent swing. He says politicians rarely have legacies: 'Things are never static; there are never permanent victories.' He says he made his greatest mark in education, had a genuine zeal for reform as justice secretary, but there was too much unfinished business. He mentions how, after the Grenfell fire, he brought in the Building Safety Act. But of course, his one abiding legacy is Brexit. I ask if in 2016 he'd known how the next decade would play out, how exiting the EU would suck away so much energy from issues he cared about, whether he'd still have supported it. 'I don't know that I would have had the courage to say, 'Let's leave.' I hope I would have done.' But then he adds, more robustly, 'Some of the things which made me more pro-Brexit were the reactions to it. How the condescension towards people beforehand became more vivid and strident afterwards. 'These people didn't know what they were voting for,' or, 'Voting Leave is correlated with a lower level of education.' That only made me more pleased to have been on that side.' As for Brexit bonuses, he says, 'It's literally too soon to say. But the loudest predictions of ruin from the Remain side have certainly not come true, nor have the most extravagant predictions of benefits from Leavers.' Of his most notorious quote that 'people have had enough of experts', he says, 'I went through a period of actually thinking, 'Well, that isn't quite what I said. It's an inaccuracy. I want to try to make the case properly.' And now I think, 'That's fine. And do you know what? [His eyes gleam.] We have had enough of experts.' You're doubling down? 'Yes.' Whom do you mean by experts? 'People in organisations with three-letter acronyms. The IFS, CBI, IFP. And so on. Book-smart people who attempt to reduce the complexity of humanity to something that will fit into a PPE essay.' Can you imagine voting anything but Conservative? 'No. I used to, but now it's too late.' It's in your blood? 'Yes.' Never Reform? 'No.' I ask if he's back on speaking terms with Kemi Badenoch after having an affair with her friend, causing the break-up of a marriage. His eyes go saucer-wide and he won't comment. 'I am a huge fan of Kemi, but she's got a much more high-pressure job than me.' Do you think she's doing it well? 'Yes.' Isn't she too fighty to bring the electorate or even the Tory party with her? 'I think it's a good thing to be fighty.' He's fascinated by Blue Labour, got to know Lord Glasman during the referendum, has known Labour's campaign strategist Pat McFadden since the Nineties, when he worked for Donald Dewar, while Gove was a researcher on Scottish TV. 'I admire Morgan McSweeney. I very much admire Shabana Mahmood. I admire Wes Streeting. I don't dislike Keir Starmer at all; I just think he and Rachel Reeves have got themselves into an unnecessarily difficult situation … I'd say he's handled foreign affairs and defence better than I would have expected, and domestic politics worse.' Editing a political magazine must be fun, but doesn't he miss the power and tumult at the heart of government? 'This is a crap analogy, because I haven't been either, but it's a bit like I was a farmer and then I was called up. I served my time as a soldier and then, at the end of it, I was demobbed. Maybe it's the case that I will forever carry the PTSD from the trenches with me, but I'm now back on the farm. I really enjoy being a farmer, but there were experiences that were irreplaceable as a result of having been called up where we did things that needed to be done.' Then, as I am leaving, I note several shirts on the back of his office door. 'I need them to get changed into because I'm always spilling things down me,' Gove says. (He is noted for his lack of physical coordination.) But he does smell very nice. What is that fragrance, I ask, and he rushes to his briefcase to pull out a bottle of a Geo F Trumper cologne called Spanish Leather. 'I know!' Gove says. 'It's only going to fuel the gay rumours.' Quite Right, a new podcast from The Spectator, launches in September. Find out more at
Times
40 minutes ago
- Times
Our summer reading guide: 10 terrific books for children
One of my favourite books of the year so far, this is Adrian Mole for the gaming generation. Nathanael Lessore is a rising star and his latest tale, about a wisecracking introvert who suddenly finds popularity through an online alter ego, has had my 11-year-old son in stitches. The whip-smart dialogue really captures the way he and his friends speak. Beneath the jokes, there's real emotional depth to this cautionary tale about balancing your online life with your real one. It also provides youngsters with the added pleasure of explaining — tweensplaining? — all the slang terms to the adults in their lives. A brilliant read for tween boys (and girls) everywhere. Hot Key £8.99 pp320Buy a copy of What Happens Online There's no shortage of children's adventure stories set in ye olde London, but this one stands ragged shoulders above the rest. It's the 1830s and street urchins are vanishing. Strange figures are shadowing the markets and something's lurking in the sewers. No one seems to care apart from Cassia Thorne, a debtor's daughter who scrapes a living selling ballads at Bartholomew Fair. Determined to solve the mystery, she teams up with Teo, an orphan based on the children who really were trafficked from Italy to London to work as street musicians. Their world is made vivid in this sophisticated and exciting adventure, inspired by Dickens's Little Dorrit. & Schuster £7.99 pp336Buy a copy of Deep Dark • Seven books to get kids reading again — Dr Seuss, Wimpy Kid and more Geraldine McCaughrean has been described as 'one of the greatest living children's authors' and this novel — her 170th — is a masterclass in urgent, powerful storytelling. It follows the fates of four young Londoners who forge a close friendship when they make a split decision to avoid evacuation and flee back to the bombed out, rubble-strewn neighbourhood they call home. The world of the Blitz is brought into raw, flaming life. It feels like plunging into one of those black-and-white Pathé film reels and finding everything in colour. Although the setting may be historical, the issues of peace, conflict, forgiveness and revenge are anything but. Brutal, beautiful and £8.99 pp288Buy a copy of Under a Fire-Red Sky The words 'blank verse' and 'baseball' don't float your boat? No matter, because Black Star is wonderful whether you like sport or not. It's not really about baseball at all; it's about being a black 12-year-old girl in 1920s Virginia. In this age of shortened concentration spans, blank verse is the perfect format, distilling big ideas into short and snappy stories that deliver plenty of literary bang for their buck. As always, Kwame Alexander's writing zings with confidence. Come for the quick read, stay for the crash course in the poetry of Gwendolyn Brooks and Harlem Renaissance pioneers such as Langston Hughes. 'This ball's on fire, better sound the alarm.'Andersen £14.99 pp384Buy a copy of Black Star • Eight books to get your child excited about reading Another blank verse novel, but this time with a very northern English accent. Nate has just navigated a difficult final year of primary school but now a new world of anxieties and expectations lies ahead. It's called … secondary school. 'Teachers with tans wear new start smiles: Welcome, welcome. This way to the hall. This must be how gladiators felt on their way to the arena.' This is a big-hearted book with moments of lyricism and a little bit of grit. It's honest and relatable but never miserable. A particularly good read for primary school-leavers who are about to take their first flight to secondary £9.99 pp480Buy a copy of The First Year Published just ahead of the Uefa Women's Euros next month, this manual covers 'all the football skills every fan and player needs to know'. Using photographs of the talented young boy and girl players from Oadby Owls, a community club in Leicestershire, each page features how-to tips on different aspects of the game, from perfecting your first touch to placing a shot. Design is the biggest selling point here: the book is light on text and big on photographs and diagrams. According to the author and 'football mum' Katie Daynes, the manual aims to help 'all those parents who spent their weekends supporting grassroots football […] understand and appreciate the game better'.Usborne £7.99 pp104Buy a copy of Football Skills • The 9 best graphic novels for kids – recommended by teachers Osamu Tezuka, the 'godfather of manga', died before he could give one of his beloved characters an ending. Almost 50 years later the baton has been passed to the American writer Samuel Sattin, and the artist duo known as Gurihiru to complete the tale of Unico. And what an enchanting reboot it is. The artwork does justice to the cinematic sweep of Tezuka's work, and the story of a 'brave, young unicorn' lost in time and space, spreading love wherever he goes, while struggling to remember who he is or where he came from, will appeal to a broad range of age groups, from eight upwards. £10.99 pp224Buy a copy of Unico As Dolly Parton said: 'It takes a lot of time and money to look this cheap' — and a lot of clever plotting has gone into this ridiculously escapist thriller. Two teenage girls meet on a train. One is a spoilt brat who is being sent to a Swiss rehab centre as punishment for her wild behaviour. The other is a skint backpacker with her own secrets. They hatch a cunning plan to swap identities. Each steps off the train into the other's life — on the condition they will return to the same spot to swap back in six weeks' time. Cue a cat and mouse game between two supremely scheming frenemies that ricochets around Europe until a very unexpected denouement in the … Isles of Scilly. Preposterous, improbable and lots of £9.99 pp368Buy a copy of The Other Girl • Read more book reviews and interviews — and see what's top of the Sunday Times Bestsellers List Giddy up for a pony story with a twist. Forget Follyfoot and My Friend Flicka, this is a surreal and quirky survival story set in the kind of New Zealand you don't usually see in the tourism adverts. A grieving 12-year-old girl runs away from home with her mother's ashes and her most trusted companion, 'a nuggety little bay' named Tooth. There are criminals, a genuine sense of peril, and themes of grief and family breakdown. And did I mention the horse talks? Tender but never twee, it's an indie movie just waiting to happen. I loved £7.99 pp220Buy a copy of Ride North The Notwitches is a triumph of nonsense. There's no message. There's no big 'ishoo'. It is a celebration of silliness for silliness's sake, and hallelujah for that. (For all the hand-wringing over the reading for pleasure crisis, it's often forgotten that books like this make reading fun in the first place.) Gary Panton earned his comedy stripes writing for The Beano, Hey Duggee and Bluey so knows a thing or two about entertaining little ones. His first children's book features a young girl called Melanda who runs away from her three horrid aunts. It revolves almost entirely around the increasingly surreal conversations with the gnomes, mermaids and sleepy rock monsters she meets along the way. Well, I say mermaids; these ones are reversed: 'Top half of fish. Bottom half of a lady.' They run around on the sand, 'Sounding their siren call, 'hiya!'' Cheeky and refreshing, with an old-fashioned dose of House £7.99 pp304Buy a copy of The Notwitches
