• The best books on The Scottish Highlands - The Living Mountain by Nan Shepherd
  • The best books on The Scottish Highlands - The Poems of Norman MacCaig ed. Ewen MacCaig
  • The best books on The Scottish Highlands - Sea Room by Adam Nicolson
  • The best books on The Scottish Highlands - Song of the Rolling Earth: A Highland Odyssey by John Lister-Kaye
  • The best books on The Scottish Highlands - At the Loch of the Green Corrie by Andrew Greig

The best books on The Scottish Highlands, recommended by Annie Worsley

The Scottish Highlands are known for the stark splendour of the landscape and the bellowing of the stags. They have inspired many classic works of poetry and nature writing, says Annie Worsley—the author of a memoir set on Scotland’s rugged north west coast. Here, she recommends five books on the Scottish Highlands that portray the people and their place.

  • The Best Nonfiction Books: The 2024 Duff Cooper Prize - The Revolutionary Temper: Paris, 1748–1789 by Robert Darnton
  • The Best Nonfiction Books: The 2024 Duff Cooper Prize - France on Trial: The Case of Marshal Pétain by Julian Jackson
  • The Best Nonfiction Books: The 2024 Duff Cooper Prize - Monet: The Restless Vision by Jackie Wullschläger
  • The Best Nonfiction Books: The 2024 Duff Cooper Prize - Revolutionary Spring: Europe Aflame and the Fight for a New World, 1848-1849 by Christopher Clark
  • The Best Nonfiction Books: The 2024 Duff Cooper Prize - Courting India: England, Mughal India and the Origins of Empire by Nandini Das

The Best Nonfiction Books: The 2024 Duff Cooper Prize, recommended by Susan Brigden

If you’re looking for nonfiction with a literary sensibility and a historical bent, the books highlighted by the annual Pol Roger Duff Cooper Prize are a great place to start. British historian Susan Brigden, author of Thomas Wyatt: The Heart’s Forest and one of the prize’s judges, talks us through the 2024 shortlist — from war and revolution to the splendours of Mughal India and Monet’s garden at Giverny.

  • The Best Nonfiction of the Past Quarter Century: The Baillie Gifford Prize Winner of Winners - Peacemakers by Margaret MacMillan
  • The Best Nonfiction of the Past Quarter Century: The Baillie Gifford Prize Winner of Winners - 1599: A Year in the Life of William Shakespeare by James Shapiro
  • The Best Nonfiction of the Past Quarter Century: The Baillie Gifford Prize Winner of Winners - Nothing to Envy by Barbara Demick
  • The Best Nonfiction of the Past Quarter Century: The Baillie Gifford Prize Winner of Winners - Empire of Pain: The Secret History of the Sackler Dynasty by Patrick Radden Keefe
  • The Best Nonfiction of the Past Quarter Century: The Baillie Gifford Prize Winner of Winners - Into the Silence: The Great War, Mallory and the Conquest of Everest by Wade Davis
  • The Best Nonfiction of the Past Quarter Century: The Baillie Gifford Prize Winner of Winners - One Two Three Four: The Beatles in Time by Craig Brown

The Best Nonfiction of the Past Quarter Century: The Baillie Gifford Prize Winner of Winners, recommended by Sophie Roell

“All the best stories are true” runs the tagline of the Baillie Gifford Prize for Non-Fiction, the UK’s pre-eminent nonfiction book award. This year, to celebrate the prize’s 25th birthday, a panel of judges picked out books for a winner of winners award, making for an excellent collection of nonfiction books from the last quarter of a century, as Five Books editor Sophie Roell explains.

  • The Best Nonfiction Books: The 2023 Baillie Gifford Prize Shortlist - Fire Weather: A True Story from a Hotter World by John Vaillant
  • The Best Nonfiction Books: The 2023 Baillie Gifford Prize Shortlist - Mr. B: George Balanchine’s Twentieth Century by Jennifer Homans
  • The Best Nonfiction Books: The 2023 Baillie Gifford Prize Shortlist - Time's Echo: The Second World War, the Holocaust, and the Music of Remembrance by Jeremy Eichler
  • The Best Nonfiction Books: The 2023 Baillie Gifford Prize Shortlist - Revolutionary Spring: Europe Aflame and the Fight for a New World, 1848-1849 by Christopher Clark
  • The Best Nonfiction Books: The 2023 Baillie Gifford Prize Shortlist - Red Memory: The Afterlives of China's Cultural Revolution by Tania Branigan
  • The Best Nonfiction Books: The 2023 Baillie Gifford Prize Shortlist - Time to Think: The Inside Story of the Collapse of the Tavistock’s Gender Service for Children by Hannah Barnes

The Best Nonfiction Books: The 2023 Baillie Gifford Prize Shortlist, recommended by Frederick Studemann

If you’re looking for compelling stories that also happen to be true, the UK’s Baillie Gifford Prize for Non-Fiction is a great place to start. Frederick Studemann, Literary Editor of the Financial Times, talks us through the six brilliant books that made the 2023 shortlist, from a gripping account of a 2016 firestorm in Alberta to the shadow the Cultural Revolution continues to cast over today’s China. Read more nonfiction book recommendations on Five Books