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The Independent
29-05-2025
- Entertainment
- The Independent
The books we're packing for summer 2025 holidays, from fantasy to romances
Alongside your passport, swimwear and SPF, a good beach read is an essential in your summer holiday suitcase. Helping you switch off and relax, there a few better feelings than escaping into the pages of a book while stretched out on a sun lounger (Aperol Spritz, optional). But what makes a good summer book? For some, it's revisiting the comforting reads that they associate with a certain place and time, while for others it's indulging in romantasy, diving into exciting debuts, page-turning thrillers or classics set in the destination you're sojourning in. Above all, you want to enjoy yourself – and you don't want to waste valuable sun lounging time on a bad book. Luckily, the IndyBest team is on hand with their literary recommendations for this summer. From a century-spanning William Boyd tome to a classic Patricia Highsmith thriller and Sarah J Maas's TikTok-viral A Court of Thorns and Roses series, these are the best summer books that deserve a special spot in your suitcase. This is one of the best novels I've ever read. I'm certain that this forgotten classic will make its way onto best lists and university curricula over the coming decades. Set just after the First World War, it follows an ex-serviceman as he restores a medieval fresco in a Yorkshire village. Taking place over just a month in 1920, it's full of perfect portrayals of the English countryside. Anyone who has spent time in rural Yorkshire will love Carr's tight, neat descriptions of its fields and woods in summertime. This quiet novel is a surprising page-turner; as Tom Birkin chips away at the wall painting, he confronts his damage from the war, and draws you further and further into his relationship with the villagers and the painting he uncovers. It's a short book – you can read it in an afternoon by the pool – but it's one of those novels that stays with you for months after you read it. A truly great family saga is one that spans generations, cleverly weaves together different plots and intertwines personal stories with historical events – The Covenant of Water is a story that ticked all these boxes for me and more. The novel opens in 1900 in Travancore, in the south west of India (in what is now part of Kerala), where a young girl is sent by boat to meet her much older husband-to-be for the first time. From that moment we see her grow into the matriarch of her family, affectionately known as Big Ammachi. Over the next seven decades we witness the lives, deaths, marriages, triumphs and more of her descendants, all touched by a mysterious curse. In every generation, at least one person dies by drowning and yet, their home of Parambil, is surrounded by water. Verghese crafts an epic tale with a cast of beautifully written characters and unexpected twists. The lakes and rivers of southern India are brought vividly to life and I felt completely drawn into the world he so wonderfully creates. With more than 700 pages, it's a chunky read, but the storytelling is so immersive that you won't want it to end. It's ideal for a long summer getaway but if you're travelling light, it's definitely one to download on your e-reader. If you're a fan of Pachinko or Homegoing, I think you'll love this too. I envy you if you're yet to devour William Boyd's Any Human Heart. Just as enjoyable on its first read as it is on its second (or even third), the cult novel follows Logan Mountstuart's life that stretches across the 20th Century. Spanning an anything-but-ordinary existence as a writer mingling with Hemingway in Paris, a spy during the Second World War recruited by none-other than Ian Fleming, an art-dealer in the swinging Sixties and much more, Boyd explores familial, romantic and platonic love his signature warm and witty voice. A modern classic, it's a masterclass in story telling that's just as joyous as it is emotional (be warned), and the perfect companion on your sun lounger this summer. 'A Court of Thorns and Roses' by Sarah J Maas, published by Bloomsbury: £5, After seeing so much hype online about Sarah J Maas's romantesy series, A Court of Thorns and Roses, I hesitantly brought the first book with me on a family holiday last summer. It wasn't long before I was hooked and immediately regretting not bringing the entire six-book series with me. In the novel, we meet Feyre, a human huntress who kills a wolf that is not all it appears to be. Feyre is soon taken prisoner in the faerie realm, as revenge for the murder of a fellow faerie. As she discovers more about her captor, the high lord of the spring court Tamlin, Feyre develops feelings for her enemy (in true 'romantasy' style). Meanwhile, a war is brewing, thanks to Amarantha, the evil and vindictive high queen of Prythian. Yes, it all sounds faintly ridiculous, but as a former fantasy literature hater, Sarah J Maas has made me a convert. It's excellent at world building while the enemy-to-lover storyline keeps you hooked until the very last page - the true marker of a good sun lounger read. Part psychological thriller and part story of disaffected university students, Tartt's tome follows a group of clever misfits at an elite New England college and the chain of events that led to the death of a classmate. Although from a lower-class family, newbie Richard is accepted into the clique of students who are all under the cult-like influence of their charismatic Greek classics professor. When one member of the group threatens to reveal the group's role in the murder, tensions rise and the second half of the novel explores the psychological consequences of hiding such a terrible secret. Offering pure escapsim, Tartt boths thrills and intrigues the reader. I read this book last summer on holiday in Croatia after falling in love with Dolly's now infamous 2018 memoir, ' Everything I know about Love '. It's a collection of entries from her Sunday Times Style agony aunt column, which covers everything from friendship to careers and, of course, love lives. An easy and insightful read, the book's plotless nature makes it a great one to dip in and out of in between fun-filled vacation excursions. You'll naturally find yourself relating to the queries of both those writing in and Dolly's comforting, non-judgemental big sister advice. It doesn't try too hard to be all-knowing or too existential, instead walking the line between self-help and having a chat with a friend. Additionally, the scenarios that readers write in make for great conversation topics over evening cocktails. I have yet to read this one but can't wait to pick it up this summer. It sounds like the perfect mix of crime thriller, twisted feminist fantasy and gourmet cooking – what more could you want? The plot follows a chef as she sits in a Japanese detention centre, accused of murdering lonely businessmen after seducing them with her cooking. Once a scrappy journalist begins to break down her walls through a, seemingly, shared love of food we begin to learn more about obsession, romance, misogyny and the layered relationship between Japan and food. I'm only halfway through this book, but I'm completely hooked. The story follows a woman who transcribes sex and relationship therapy sessions in a quirky small town. As she listens to her neighbours' most intimate confessions, their secrets start to seep hilariously, and often cringe-inducingly, into her own life. One voice inparticular captures her attention: the enigmatic 'Big Swiss.' As fate (and small-town dynamics) would have it, she meets this woman in real life, and the story takes off with intrigue, drama, and unexpected connection. The writing is sharp, sexy, and packed with dry humour. It's gossipy in the best way, like eavesdropping on a very juicy secret. A perfect summer read that's both smart and irresistibly entertaining. Even more exciting? It's being adapted into an HBO series starring Jodie Comer. If you love character-driven, offbeat stories with a voyeuristic twist, this one's a must. With the critically acclaimed Netflix series Ripley causing a stir earlier in the year, American novelist Patricia Highsmith's wily anti-hero Tom Ripley has captured a new generation of first book in the series, which was originally published in 1955, tells the story of Tom Ripley, a young, aimless man from New York who is offered a lot of money by the wealthy father of Dickie Greenleaf to go to Italy and persuade him to return to America. Tom integrates himself with Dickie and his girlfriend Marge on the sunny Italian coast, and becomes enamoured with the Mediterranean lifestyle. But when Tom's relationship with Dickie becomes more and more unsettling, Marge begins to suspect that Tom isn't everything he claims to be. Things turn deadly and Tom has to go on the run from the Italian police. The book's vivid portrayal of towns and cities across Italy coupled with a nail-biting narrative will draw you into Tom Ripley's twisted universe. If you find yourself sweltering by a pool this summer, forget dipping in the water to cool off. Instead, dive into this captivating memoir, which follows painter Christiane Ritter as she decides to join her hunter-trapper husband in the Arctic Circle, where the mercury falls as low as -35C. Just reading about the icy, sub-zero conditions is enough to make your temperature drop. Spending a year living in an isolated hut in Spitsbergen – an island in the Svalbard archipelago – Ritter endures everything from dwindling supplies to the threat of polar bears. From unblinking daylight and glittering glaciers in summer to never-ending nights and severe storms in winter, Ritter marvels at her surroundings and discovers what it takes to survive so far north. What makes the author's Arctic adventure even more awe-inspiring is the fact it took place in the 1930s, without any of the hi-tech gear used by polar explorers today. Like all the best travel writers, Ritter transports readers to the otherworldly landscape she encounters. Even if your own travels are more likely to involve swimwear and sangria than snow boots and sea ice, you can't help but be drawn in by Ritter's grit and good humour. The 'unimaginable world of splendour and beauty' she describes is enough to make you want to say goodbye to sun loungers in Saint-Tropez, in favour of eking out an existence in a frozen shack in Svalbard. Well, almost – on second thought, perhaps it's better to stick to reading about it by the pool. 'My Year of Rest and Relaxation' by Ottessa Moshfegh, published by Jonathan Cape: £8.41, Everyone was reading or talking about this book at one point, and it's still a strong contender for your summer reading pile. The main character uses sleep as a form of extreme 'rest and relaxation' – the goal being to sleep for a year to escape feelings of disillusionment and emerge anew, which she attempts by getting sleep-inducing medications from a bizarre, very questionable psychiatrist. It mostly unfolds in her New York apartment, and socialising is more of less limited to one dysfunctional friendship, so it's a claustrophobic read. Dark, but very funny, it covers themes of isolation, grief, and privilege. If you like a book with lots of twists and turns then this may bore you (it can be quite repetitive), but it's an interesting take on something like self care, and quite addicting. I'm about halfway through Maud Ventura's My Husband, translated from French by Emma Ramadan, on Audible, and I can't wait to get back to it. Consumed with thoughts of her husband, even after years of marriage, the protagonist of the novel is, to put it plainly, obsessed with him. She ruminates on her husband's behaviour, second-guesses his feelings for her, and, in pursuit of the perfect relationship, takes things to the extreme. It's unnerving and, at points, quietly hilarious. A dark, compelling novel, this reads as easily as a hot knife glides through butter, making it (so far) the perfect psychological thriller to pick up and rip through by the pool this summer. In seven short stories, Haruki Murakami leads the reader through the lives and stories of men who have loved and lost women in some way in their lives, and the lasting impact that each of these relationships hold. Although translated from Japanese, so I'm not reading it in its original form, Murakami has a unique way of storytelling that makes all of his books so easy to read. This one felt especially impactful in the way that it examined completely different relationships with completely different types of people and, while remaining fully their own stories, brought together an overall message of appreciation for women and their impact on men. I took Men without Women with me on a beach holiday this year and it was a perfect holiday read in it being a short, easily digestible book with vivid imagery and depth. There was a sense of calm that I had while reading this book, as I've experienced with other Murakami books, that keep the author at the top of my list in stories to reach for.
Times
30-04-2025
- Entertainment
- Times
The 14 best Second World War novels — chosen by William Boyd and Max Hastings
Let's begin with an intriguing thought experiment: the celebrated writers of the First World War contrasted with those of the Second, writes William Boyd. The essential writers of 1914-18 — the Great War — might be judiciously considered as, for instance: Wilfred Owen, Siegfried Sassoon, Edmund Blunden, Robert Graves, Isaac Rosenberg, Ivor Gurney and Charles Sorley. Whereas the 1939-45 conflict produces names like Evelyn Waugh, Graham Greene, Norman Mailer, Joseph Heller, Muriel Spark, Anthony Powell, Elizabeth Bowen, Vasily Grossman and Hans Hellmut Kirst, for example. The first group contains only poets; the second is all novelists. How can this schism, this paradox between the two art forms be explained? Why was poetry the chosen means of literary expression in the Great War and the
The Independent
02-03-2025
- Entertainment
- The Independent
Author William Boyd explains how Nigerian Civil War experience shaped his work
Author William Boyd has recalled how his work was shaped by an experience during the Nigerian Civil War involving 'six or seven drunk soldiers with their AK-47s'. The writer, known for novels including A Good Man In Africa, was born in Ghana in 1952 and moved to Nigeria with his family in 1964, three years before the Biafran War began. 'You couldn't escape the war,' he told BBC Radio 4's Desert Island Discs. He continued: 'One great event, which really did shape and change my thinking was, I was learning to drive, and we used to drive on deserted roads at the edge of the campus, with my father teaching. 'And we were driving home, he took a shortcut, and we passed a road block, a very flimsy road block, and my father spotted it, screeched to a halt, but out of the bushes came six or seven drunk soldiers with their AK-47s shouting and screaming at us because they thought we were trying to avoid the roadblock. 'They ordered us out of the car, guns pointing at us. And that moment, I thought, this could all go horribly wrong, because they were out of control, there was no officer. 'We were alone on a road in the bush. My father, to his great credit, said, 'Call that a roadblock, you useless bunch of soldiers'. 'And he upgraded them, and they started to laugh, and the whole thing was diffused, but I've never forgotten that moment of knife edge, 'uh oh. This could all end very, very badly.' 'It's affected my work, and it's affected the way I look at conflict and the way I understand wars. 'Because, even though I was never in any great danger, I did live in a country that was tearing itself apart in a civil war, and saw and had friends in the African army and heard their stories. I realised that real war is nothing like the movies.' He continued: 'I think things that happened to me, like that moment of the roadblock in Nigeria, or my father's early death, and my wife's mother's early death… showed me that the universe is a kind of random, unsparing place. 'So I came up with this idea that everybody has their share of good luck and their share of bad luck, and with most people that the two piles that accrue in their life sort of match up, but don't expect the road to be straight and narrow.' His first novel, A Good Man In Africa, won him the first novel gong at the Whitbread Literary Awards, now the Costa Book Awards, in 1981. It was turned into a 1994 film starring Sean Connery and John Lithgow. His other novels include Love Is Blind, Restless, which was adapted for TV, and Waiting For Sunrise. Following in the footsteps of authors including Sir Kingsley Amis and Sebastian Faulks, he also wrote Solo, a James Bond continuation novel released in 2013.
Yahoo
02-03-2025
- Entertainment
- Yahoo
Author William Boyd explains how Nigerian Civil War experience shaped his work
Author William Boyd has recalled how his work was shaped by an experience during the Nigerian Civil War involving 'six or seven drunk soldiers with their AK-47s'. The writer, known for novels including A Good Man In Africa, was born in Ghana in 1952 and moved to Nigeria with his family in 1964, three years before the Biafran War began. 'You couldn't escape the war,' he told BBC Radio 4's Desert Island Discs. He continued: 'One great event, which really did shape and change my thinking was, I was learning to drive, and we used to drive on deserted roads at the edge of the campus, with my father teaching. 'And we were driving home, he took a shortcut, and we passed a road block, a very flimsy road block, and my father spotted it, screeched to a halt, but out of the bushes came six or seven drunk soldiers with their AK-47s shouting and screaming at us because they thought we were trying to avoid the roadblock. 'They ordered us out of the car, guns pointing at us. And that moment, I thought, this could all go horribly wrong, because they were out of control, there was no officer. 'We were alone on a road in the bush. My father, to his great credit, said, 'Call that a roadblock, you useless bunch of soldiers'. 'And he upgraded them, and they started to laugh, and the whole thing was diffused, but I've never forgotten that moment of knife edge, 'uh oh. This could all end very, very badly.' 'It's affected my work, and it's affected the way I look at conflict and the way I understand wars. 'Because, even though I was never in any great danger, I did live in a country that was tearing itself apart in a civil war, and saw and had friends in the African army and heard their stories. I realised that real war is nothing like the movies.' He continued: 'I think things that happened to me, like that moment of the roadblock in Nigeria, or my father's early death, and my wife's mother's early death… showed me that the universe is a kind of random, unsparing place. 'So I came up with this idea that everybody has their share of good luck and their share of bad luck, and with most people that the two piles that accrue in their life sort of match up, but don't expect the road to be straight and narrow.' His first novel, A Good Man In Africa, about a minor official in the fictional African country of Kinjaja, won him the first novel gong at the Whitbread Literary Awards, now the Costa Book Awards, in 1981. It was also turned into a 1994 film starring Sean Connery and John Lithgow. His other novels include Love Is Blind, Restless, and Waiting For Sunrise. He also wrote, Solo, a James Bond continuation novel released in 2013.
Yahoo
28-01-2025
- Business
- Yahoo
Christopher Sinclair-Stevenson, old-school publisher who fought against corporate behemoths
Christopher Sinclair-Stevenson, who has died aged 85, was once hailed by The Daily Telegraph as 'the last of the great lunching publishers'; after three decades with Hamish Hamilton, he struck out in 1989 to launch his own firm, Sinclair-Stevenson Ltd, in a valiant but doomed stand against the increasing corporatisation of publishing. At Hamish Hamilton, where he was managing director from 1974, he had earned a reputation as one of the best editors in Britain. Among the authors he guided to success there were Susan Hill (who would only go on with a novel after he had approved the first chapter), William Boyd, Jane Gardam and Paul Theroux. He liked to size up a book's potential over a long lunch with an author or agent, without recourse to the marketing department's views on its saleability. Trusting to his instincts, rather than the dictates of common sense, often proved lucrative. He came away from one lunch telling himself he must have been mad to offer an advertising executive a £5,000 advance for a memoir about living in France; but in the event Peter Mayle's A Year in Provence sold six million copies. He did not disdain blatant money-spinners, a book of photographs by Prince Andrew among them. At the other end of the intellectual spectrum, he paid £80,000 for the rights to Richard Ellmann's biography of Oscar Wilde (1987) – a record-breaking sum for a literary life. It sold so well that literary biographers found their ill-remunerated trade briefly awash with money as other publishers scrambled to emulate its success. He began to feel increasingly out of place in the publishing landscape of the 1980s, however, as international conglomerates mounted aggressive campaigns to buy up venerable British imprints. In 1985 Hamish Hamilton was sold to the US-backed Penguin Group; four years later Sinclair-Stevenson resigned as managing director. 'Corporate publishing does not encourage editors' enthusiasms and eccentricities … [so] an anodyne, homogenised culture has broken out,' Sinclair-Stevenson told the Telegraph. He had tired of endless unproductive meetings and decisions being taken across the Atlantic by executives he did not know. Penguin was taken aback by his departure – he was told that he would have continued to be 'tolerated as an anomaly' – and the parting was acrimonious. The following year he launched Sinclair-Stevenson Ltd, housed in a mews off the Old Brompton Road, with Lord Rees-Mogg as chairman; with the help of his old friend Tim Waterstone, the bookseller, he secured backing from 3i Group. He was determined to prove that an independent company specialising in 'upmarket publishing' ('I hate the expression, but it does describe what I am trying to do') could thrive. Several of his big-name authors at Hamish Hamilton took a risk and went with him. He launched his new firm with books by three of them: Peter Ackroyd's biography of Dickens and novels by AN Wilson and William Boyd. Rose Tremain, Sybille Bedford, Bernice Rubens and Maureen Duffy also defected. The new venture was well-publicised, with the press keen to support the underdog against the American, Australian and German conglomerates devouring UK publishing. Much of the coverage was devoted to a discussion of whether Sinclair-Stevenson was inspired or insane in giving Ackroyd a £600,000 advance for two biographies. Days before the firm launched, Sinclair-Stevenson's glamorous secretary Sarah Johnson outed herself to The Guardian as the long-term mistress of Leo Cooper, husband of Jilly. Her employer was suspected of guiding the timing of her revelation; in any event, the launch party was thronged with press. The Sinclair-Stevenson list boasted some bestsellers, such as the memoirs of Sir Ranulph Fiennes, and enjoyed a good deal of prestige: under its aegis Rose Tremain secured the James Tait Black Prize and the underrated poet James Michie won the Hawthornden Prize for his collected verse. The Telegraph's Jeremy Lewis feared, however, that Sinclair-Stevenson took too little interest in 'those solid if unglamorous 'bread and-butter items' – books on fishing or bridge or accountancy – that plod steadily on and pay the bills.' The dream of independence proved short-lived: in 1992 the firm was sold at a loss to the conglomerate Reed. Tim Waterstone told the press he had learnt his lesson about investing in friends' businesses. Sinclair-Stevenson was retained to run the imprint, but his role was gradually downgraded to 'ambassador-at-large' (or, as wags in the company asserted, 'ambassador-at-lunch'). He was powerless to prevent Reed from dropping his poetry list and refusing to honour some authors' contracts. In 1995 Reed sold Sinclair-Stevenson Ltd to Random House, and his connection with the imprint that bore his name formally ended. He took the unusual decision to cross the Rubicon from publishing to become a literary agent – 'I suspect it will annoy some people, so that makes me all the keener to do it.' Although his agency remained his focus thereafter, he was not quite done with publishing. In 2000 Random House decided to wind up Sinclair-Stevenson Ltd, and he asked if he could have his name back for a new venture. Random House loftily agreed that he could, as long as he published nothing which would bring into disrepute a name with which they were associated. He wrote back to ask if his first proposed publication, a new translation of the Bible in 24 volumes, met this criterion; Random House did not deign to reply. Christopher Terence Sinclair-Stevenson was born on June 27 1939, the son of George Sinclair-Stevenson, an officer in the Coldstream Guards and later a leading lawyer in Hong Kong, and his wife Gloria, née Gordon. Christopher inherited an Argentine peerage descended from a paternal great-great-uncle, but chose not to use the title, Baron Belgrado. He came from a long line of soldiers and was destined for Sandhurst, but at Eton – where he was remembered as 'a scholarly schoolmaster's dream but the despair of the games master' – his housemaster persuaded him that Cambridge might be more suitable, and he read modern languages at St John's College. In 1961 he became an editor at Hamish Hamilton, and came to look on Jamie Hamilton, who had founded the business in 1931, as a father figure, absorbing his belief in running a small-scale firm founded on the personal relationships between editors and authors. He proved adept at publicity wheezes. When he published Raymond Briggs's anti-nuclear graphic novel When the Wind Blows, he had a copy sent to every MP, leading inevitably to usefully noisy outrage from the pro-nuclear element. One bestseller he missed out on was Spycatcher, the controversial memoir by the ex-MI5 officer Peter Wright. Wright's agent Giles Gordon reported that Sinclair-Stevenson agreed terms, 'but then backed out after a visit from a sinister person in a bowler hat'. His martial ancestry remained apparent, according to one commentator, in his 'unpublisher-like neatness of dress'. Unpunctual authors attested that he was 'tougher and more autocratic than his elegant, easygoing exterior might suggest'. One of his closest friends was Sir Alec Guinness, from whom he finally coaxed the long-delayed first volume of his autobiography, Blessings in Disguise, in 1985. Sinclair-Stevenson later became his literary agent: the hardest part of the job, he recalled, was, on book tours, trying to prevent press or public from asking the great actor anything about Star Wars, which he had come to loathe. Sinclair-Stevenson also gained a reputation as a popular historian in his own right. He wrote books on the Jacobite Risings of the early 18th century (Inglorious Rebellion, 1971); the Gordon Highlanders (The Life of a Regiment, 1974); the Hanoverian Georges (Blood Royal, 1979); and France (That Sweet Enemy, 1987). He also translated works by Simenon. He was founding director of the Southwark Literature Festival from 2000. He reviewed often for the Telegraph, and was treasured for his waspishly neat reflections on memoirs by his fellow publishers. Of Tom Maschler he wrote: 'There is… something rather endearing about a man so convinced of his brilliance, as if Mr Pooter had come to Bloomsbury.' Sinclair-Stevenson retired last year and Andrew Lownie took on his list of clients. He married, in 1965, Deborah Walker-Smith, daughter of the Conservative politician Lord Broxbourne. She died in 2022. Christopher Sinclair-Stevenson, born June 27 1939, died January 20 2025 Broaden your horizons with award-winning British journalism. Try The Telegraph free for 1 month with unlimited access to our award-winning website, exclusive app, money-saving offers and more.
