Europe Books

Dissent is not just about anger, but about having a rival articulation of the world, argues American historian Timothy Snyder. He recommends five books by European writers of the 20th century who lived in regimes that "not only monopolised violence but threatened it in an everyday sense" and tells us what today’s dissidents can learn from their experience.

The Dutch science journalist takes a light-hearted look at national stereotypes: why Dutch women are happy, and what it means to be blonde. She picks the best books on Dutch women.

Veteran diplomat Michael Palliser discusses his friend Henry Kissinger’s diplomatic skills and says his experiences in post-war Germany made him a committed European

Booker Prize-winning translator David Bellos says Les Misérables is the greatest novel of all time. When it came out, "it was an event bigger than the launch of Titanic and Avatar put together." He picks the five greatest French novels.

The historian and author chooses five books on de Gaulle and the Resistance. He says the British tried to veto de Gaulle’s famous 1940 speech from London calling on the French to stand up to German occupation

Princeton professor of Hellenic studies says the 17th-century Mediterranean is fascinating because it was a time when nobody was in charge. And yet, it was possible to have "order without law"

From the tyranny of Franco in Spain to the silence of the Catholic Church during the Holocaust, Carmen Callil (1938-2022), author of Bad Faith, recommends books on some darker aspects of European and French history in the 19th and 20th centuries.

From the book Robinson Crusoe was based on to surrealist filmmakers, Jason Webster chooses five books that illustrate the power of the Spanish imagination.

The Dutch army captain whose unit secured Tuzla airbase for the incoming UN aid in 1994 talks about the books he kept with him in Bosnia, and the inspiration for his Yugoslav novel, King of Tuzla

The English countryside on a sunny summer's day is one of the most beguiling places in the world to be. But how has it changed since the Black Death? Is there still a meaningful difference between urban and rural society? Rural historian Paul Brassley talks us through the best books to get a fuller understanding of England's green and pleasant land.