Cal Flyn, Deputy Editor

There are dozens of novels about the First World War, many of them well worth your time. Here, Alice Winn—author of In Memoriam, a bestselling story of forbidden love between two young soldiers—selects five of the very best, including autobiographical fiction by former officers and historical novels that bring humanity to the horror of the Great War.

Fishing as an activity offers the hobbyist an excuse to leave everyday worries on the shore; it’s an opportunity for solitude, and for deep, even meditative, appreciation of the natural world. Here, Malachy Tallack—the keen angler and author of fly-fishing memoir Illuminated by Water, selects five of the best books on fishing.

Every year, the judges of the PEN/E.O. Wilson Award highlight the best new literary science writing. The 2023 shortlist consists of five fascinating books on subjects including the science of heartbreak, the sensory worlds of animals, and the development of mathematics. David Hu, a professor of mechanical engineering and a member of this year’s judging panel, talks us through their choices.

Poetry written during the First World War has remained prominent in the public consciousness for more than a century; writers like Wilfred Owen, Siegfried Sassoon, and Robert Graves are still commonly studied in British schools and universities. Here, Guy Cuthbertson—literary scholar and author of an acclaimed biography of Owen—selects five books to give an overview of the poetry produced during the Great War.

The story of a family never ends, says Thea Lenarduzzi—the literary critic and author of the prize-winning family memoir Dandelions: “It’s always evolving, rewriting itself, long after the protagonists are dead.” Here, she recommends five books on family history that illustrate the shapeshifting nature of this hard-to-pin-down subject, in which memories rarely tally with the written record.

We still don’t have a complete understanding of the ‘terra incognita’ that is the human brain, says Frederick Lepore—the noted US neurologist and author of Finding Einstein’s Brain—but we’ve made enormous breakthroughs over the past hundred years. Here, he selects five of the best books that detail the development of the strange and delicate study of clinical neuroscience through the eyes of its researchers.

Accounts of journeys on foot capture the imagination; partly this is a function of the satisfaction of following a linear journey from start to finish, and partly it is a quality inherent to walking itself—a freeing of the mind. Gail Simmons, who follows an old English pilgrimage route in her book Between the Chalk and the Sea, selects five hiking memoirs that celebrate the liberation that comes from putting one foot after another.

The future is uncertain; perhaps the only thing we do know is that, in terms of the environment and the climate, there is no going back. Ben Rawlence, the author and activist, selects five of the best books on climate adaptation—nonfiction works that might guide our path through a world of rising temperatures, melting ice caps, and shifting forests.

At the turn of the year, many of us take the opportunity to think about our lives—how they are going, and how we hope to live them in future. We asked Avram Alpert, author of The Good-Enough Life, to recommend five of the best self-help books of 2022 that might help our bids for self-improvement; his choices remind us that self-help is not only about life-hacks and diets, but about bringing the world more in line with our ideals.

Whenever we go in search of rugged landscapes, thundering waterfalls or awesome vistas, we are in search of ‘the sublime’—an aesthetic quality that has been the subject of significant philosophical, artistic and psychological study. Here, philosopher Robert Clewis talks us through the landmark studies of the sublime, and makes some recommendations for those seeking introductory books on the subject.