Anna Blundy

From the first book he recommends to students coming up to Oxford to read ancient history, to a short, popular book that weaves together all the scholarly research on the fall of the Roman Empire and the terrible things that happened as Rome was sacked by the Vandals, Oxford historian Harry Sidebottom talks us through five must-read books on Ancient Rome.

Everyone’s on the run from something in their life. Bestselling author Louise Bagshawe recommends some of her favourite chase stories, a world of jailbreaks, secret documents, beautiful heroines, honour, revenge, death and glory.

Keynes biographer Robert Skidelsky recommends the best books about one of the most important economists of all time, John Maynard Keynes.

European poker champion, author and presenter, Victoria Coren Mitchell, talks us through her library of the best books on poker.

Award-winning reporter and novelist Vanora Bennett says there are no superlatives too superlative for Anna Politkovskaya, who, after three books and innumerable investigative reporting trips to Chechnya, was murdered in Moscow

Russian literature specialist Michael Nicholson, Emeritus Fellow at University College, Oxford, talks us through the best books to learn more about the great Soviet dissident and winner of the 1970 Nobel Prize in Literature, Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn.

Via five engrossing memoirs, the Zimbabwe-born journalist Georgina Godwin talks wistfully about her country; amongst the older generation, she says, there is a feeling that Rhodesia was sold down the river by Britain and things needn’t have turned out the way they did.