Cal Flyn, Deputy Editor

George Frideric Handel was born near Leipzig, became established in Italy, and ended life as England’s national treasure. Andrew Gant—author of a new book on Handel’s most famous composition—selects the five best texts for gaining an understanding of Handel’s life and work, and explains why opera divas were the premiership footballers of the Baroque period.

Conservation and the battle against climate change are two of the most pressing issues of our age. But books on the subject have to be readable and enjoyable too, says Charlotte Smith – BBC presenter and judge for the 2020 Wainwright Prize for books on global conservation. Here she highlights the six shortlisted titles that will enchant and inspire you.

Boarding schools make great settings for novels, says Anbara Salam, author of coming-of-age drama Belladonna. The combination of immense privilege with the claustrophobia of a closed society can create an intense pressure cooker atmosphere in which characters might be forged.

Sci fi is booming, says Tom Hunter, the director of the Arthur C. Clarke Award for Science Fiction, as he discusses their 2020 shortlist: six novels that embrace classic sci fi narratives, while subverting or reimagining them for a contemporary audience.

Comedy offers escapism and a way of processing our emotions during stressful times, says the comedian Pippa Evans—who this year served as a judge for the Bollinger Everyman Wodehouse Prize for Comic Fiction. Here she talks us through the books shortlisted for the title of the funniest book of 2020, and explains how she found herself researching pig deliveries.

Every year, the International Thriller Writers awards highlight the best new thrillers of the previous year. Anthony Franze, administrator of the awards and an acclaimed thriller author in his own right, talks us through their 2020 shortlist for the best new thriller published in hardback.

Broaden your reading horizons. Much of the most exciting, playful and inventive new fiction can be read in translation, says Ted Hodgkinson, chair of the judging panel for the 2020 International Booker Prize. Here he talks us through their shortlist of six novels.

Historical fiction is experiencing something of a golden age at present: there’s never been a better time to immerse oneself in the past. The acclaimed novelist Katharine Grant—chair of the judges for the Walter Scott Prize for Historical Fiction—talks us through their 2020 shortlist.

Many of us have developed a new fascination for viruses and virology during the global COVID-19 crisis. Here, Dorothy Crawford, professor of medical microbiology and the author of Viruses: A Very Short Introduction, selects five of the best books on viruses for the general reader.

The Covid-19 crisis is often described as an ‘unprecedented’ event, but in the past outbreaks of virulent disease were much more a part of our lives. Historian Alex Chase-Levenson, author of The Yellow Flag, recommends five books that focus on the experiences of those living through an epidemic.