Sophie Roell, Editor

From the terrorists who came up with the idea of hijacking planes to get attention to a biography of the Scottish novelist Muriel Spark, the books in the running for this year’s Baillie Gifford Prize, as always, display a wonderful breadth. Robbie Millen, literary editor of the Times and chair of the 2025 judging panel, talks us through the shortlist of the UK’s most prestigious nonfiction book prize.

In the past five years, over 30 books have been published on black holes for a popular audience—testimony to our enduring fascination with these areas of spacetime from which nothing, not even light, can escape. Lynn Gamwell, author of Conjuring the Void—a beautiful book that looks at both scientific and artistic images of black holes—talks us through five of her favourites, including a PhD thesis that has not yet been published as a book.

To be shortlisted for the annual British Academy Book Prize, books have to be both rigorously researched and highly readable. Historian Rebecca Earle, chair of the 2025 judging panel, talks us through the books that made this year’s shortlist, from an environmental history that opens with Genghis Khan and the Mongol expansion to a ‘musical detective story’ that investigates the sounds made by our ancestors down the millennia.

Adventure means something different for everyone, says Nathan Gray, former fighter pilot and a judge for this year’s Wilbur Smith Prize for Adventure Writing. He talks us through the brilliant books that made the 2025 shortlist, and the journeys they took him on.

To write The Shortest History of Ancient Rome, bestselling author Ross King went back to the insightful and often entertaining accounts Roman and Greek historians gave of the city’s past. He talks us through some of his favourites, from Polybius—who wrote during the Roman Republic’s heyday—to Cassius Dio, who penned his magnum opus as the Roman Empire was in its decline.

We love books here at Five Books, and OK, we might be a bit snooty at times and insist that a book is always better than the movie based on it. And yet…there are many beloved books we wouldn’t have read if they hadn’t hit the big screen. In honour of Robert Redford (1936-2025), a list of some of the books recommended on our site that he starred in the film versions of. One of them changed my life.

The Soviet Union was the world’s first communist country and lasted around seven decades. It played a key role in defeating Nazism in Europe and became a global superpower before collapsing unexpectedly in 1991. Sheila Fitzpatrick, a leading historian of the Soviet Union, recommends books that bring to life different aspects of it, from forced labour in Glavnoye Upravleniye LAGerey (GULAG) to the heady days of the Khrushchev thaw and including the memoir of Stalin’s beloved daughter, Svetlana Alliluyeva.

Today, the Republic of Austria is a small country in Central Europe, but for centuries, it was the fulcrum of events going on in Europe, as the Habsburgs led the Holy Roman Empire—and later the multi-ethnic Austro-Hungarian Empire—until it all fell apart after World War I. Nicholas Parsons, author of the excellent The Shortest History of Austria, introduces us to books and novels that bring to life the history of a political, intellectual, and cultural powerhouse.

Is basic income a viable policy that changes everything? Matthew Johnson, Professor of Public Policy at Northumbria University, and other members of the ‘Common Sense Policy Group’ think so. He introduces us to the political philosophy behind basic income, how it works, and some of its potential outcomes.

If you’re heading to Greece this summer, it might be worth learning more about the modern history of the country you’re visiting. Yanni Kotsonis, a professor of history at NYU and author of The Greek Revolution and the Violent Birth of Nationalism, recommends a variety of books to get you started, from a short history of Greece to a novel by one of the country’s greatest writers.