The C&TH Team Share Their Favourite Reads of 2025
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2 hours ago
Best books: from poetry to design and plenty of great fiction
What’s on your Christmas wishlist? We asked C&TH contributors, editors and friends – from Dylan Jones, Celia Walden, Hugo Rifkind and our culture editor Ed Vaizey to Johnny de Falbe of the beloved John Sandoe Books and Claire Shanahan of The Women’s Prize – to nominate their best reads of the year, perfect inspiration for the Betwixtmas lull and beyond.
2025’s Best Books, According To C&TH Contributors
Dylan Jones, editor-at-large of Great British Brands
Blitz: The Club That Created the 80s by Robert Elms
Robert Elms might be known to you as a successful radio host, but he was also one of the original New Romantics, and this book is a first hand account of the Covent Garden club which gave birth to Spandau Ballet, Sade and Culture Club, magazines such as i-D and The Face and a whole host of artists, actors, fashion designers, film directors, art directors and cultural entrepreneurs. The book is a tie-in with the Blitz exhibition at the Design Museum (until March 2026), which is equally fabulous.
Ed Vaizey, C&TH culture editor
Clown Town by Mick Herron
There is only one book worth recommending. I was an early adopter of Mick Herron of Slow Horses fame, and his latest masterpiece Clown Town has just emerged. If you are a fan of the Apple TV series, the books are a must read. The dialogue from anti-hero Jackson Lamb is on another level.
Hugo Rifkind, C&TH contributor
Bring The House Down by Charlotte Runcie
Set at the Edinburgh Festival, this is an alarmingly recognisable novel about what it’s like when you’re friends with a funny, successful, slightly vicious newspaper critic who has a reputation as a terrible shagger and who abruptly ends up on the wrong side of a #metoo scandal. I’ve never met Runcie, but this could have been inspired by at least eight people I know. For clarity, I’m not one of them. I swear.
Claire Shanahan, executive director of The Women’s Prize Trust
The Names by Florence Knapp
With three alternate versions of the storyline plus time-hops, I was totally absorbed into the expansive lives of Cora, her daughter Maia and her son Bear/Julian/Gordon (depending on which thread you are reading). Each plot is layered and bittersweet – there is dread and desperation alongside glimmers of kindness and hope – marking a sophisticated and accomplished debut.
Belinda Bamber, reviewer for the C&TH Book Club
Theft by Abdulrazak Gurnah
The long-term trauma of children left behind in war is vividly imagined by the Nobel prizewinner who did manage to escape war-torn Zanzibar for a successful life in the UK. Karim and Badar are two promising young men on markedly different paths, yet both fall for beautiful Fauzia. The author’s compassion for these three young people as they navigate a difficult world is deeply relatable.
Johnny de Falbe, of John Sandoe Books
One Boat by Jonathan Buckley
A small Greek town is revisited by a grieving woman who reconnects with the friends she made there a decade earlier. A quiet but technically brilliant novel in which themes of identity, guilt and responsibility are deftly interweaved. It has been a great favourite at Sandoe’s and was longlisted for the Booker Prize: we were sorry it didn’t make it onto the shortlist.
Lucy Cleland, C&TH editorial director
Raising Hare by Chloe Dalton
The joy of Dalton’s tale about her relationship with the tiny baby hare is that you really feel it could have been you. In fact, you wish it had been. The experience of raising this creature is a window into one of the most beautiful relationships imaginable, as well as a poignant reflection on what’s at stake when we treat nature and animals the way we do.
Lisa Armstrong, C&TH contributor
Careless People by Sarah Wynn-Williams
You might not be surprised by this whistle blowing account from inside Facebook, but you definitely will be horrified. Wynn-Williams paints a picture of top-down amorality; no wonder Facebook, now Meta – erstwhile champions of free speech – tried to suppress it.
LionHeart, multi-disciplinary artist and poet
Bluets by Maggie Nelson
I’m cheating as I read this poetry collection at least twice a year and have done so since publication (in 2009).There’s something so profoundly personal about it that speaks to me. I’d recommend it to anyone interested in the curiosities of our unique human experience, or if you love the colour blue.
Celia Walden, C&TH contributor
The Image of Her by Simone de Beauvoir
This uplifting tale (written in 1966 but only published in English this year) of a middle-class mother buckling beneath the weight of a perfection that society has imposed upon her could have been written yesterday. Only the best books can connect you to the past in the way this one does – to the women that came before you. And de Beauvoir’s writing takes your breath away.
Alice B-B, C&TH editor-at-large
Courtship by Laura Bailey and Mark Arrigo
This is a love letter to tennis with photographs, essays and short stories that span the world’s courts – from the South of France to the Swiss Alps, from iconic tournament showstoppers to secret tumbledown charmers at the heart of a family or community. This book makes the right kind of racket.
Francisca Kellett, C&TH travel editor-at-large
James by Percival Everett
Never mind all the prizes. It may have won the Pulitzer and was shortlisted for the Booker, but what you need to know is that James is a rollicking retelling of The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn from the point of view of Jim, Huckleberry’s slave friend. A fiercely clever (and funny) page turner.
Olivia Emily, C&TH digital culture editor
Universality by Natasha Brown
Brown burst onto the literary scene with Assembly. This follow-up sees a cabal of hippie anarchists squatting on an abandoned Yorkshire farm when their leader is bludgeoned with a solid gold bar. It’s a slim and slippery tale cutting right through Britain’s class/power/truth clamour.
Johnny de Falbe, of John Sandoe Books
Monsieur Ozenfant’s Academy by Charles Darwent
A mentor to Le Corbusier, Ozenfant was an artist and critic who ran art schools in Paris and London in the 1920s and 30s. Highly regarded, he knew everyone: Leonora Carrington was a student, Henry Moore worked for him, Paolozzi admired him. Despite his connections, energy and talent, his star dimmed and he passed into obscurity. This short, beautifully written book is a superb resuscitation of a fascinating individual whose influence was – and is – far-reaching.
Carole Annett, C&TH interiors editor
My Life in Colors by Martin Brudnizki
From the decadent rococo interiors he created for Annabel’s to the ode to pink in his own bedroom, Brudnizki uses colour as an essential ingredient in his storytelling. Each chapter of this joyful book is devoted to a single hue, showing how he sews the emotional power of colour into his work.
