The following books are just some of the ones that I have most enjoyed reading and ones which have influenced both me and my writing.

If there is one theme that most engages me, it is perhaps loss, and the memory of loss.

You can find most of these books at www.amazon.co.uk, but like any author, I would always encourage any book buyer to support their local independent bookshop.

As you can see, despite, or perhaps because of, studying English Literature and Language at university I mostly read non-fiction.

If you know of any book that you think I would enjoy reading, please do


English Rural History and Issues

The Death of Rural England: A Social History of the Countryside Since 1900 by Alun Howkins Amazon link

Ditchampton Farm (1946) by A.G. Street Bookshop link

The Enigma of Arrival by V.S Naipaul Amazon link

The Ethics of What We Eat: Why our Food Choices Matter by Peter Singer and Jim Mason Amazon link

A History of World Agriculture: From the Neolithic Age to the Current Crisis by Marcel Mazoyer and Laurence Roudart Amazon link

Paradise Lost: Rural Idyll and Social Change Since 1800 by Jeremy Burchardt Amazon link

Rural Englands: Labouring Lives in the Nineteenth Century by Barry Reay Amazon link

Shopped: The Shocking Power of British Supermarkets by Joanna Blythman Amazon link

The Untutored Townsman's Invasion of the Country (1945) by C.E.M Joad Amazon link

The Cotswolds

Cotswold Gardens by David Hicks Amazon link

The Cotswold Way Handbook and Accomodation by Gloucestershire Area Ramblers' Association Amazon link

The Frampton Flora by Richard Mabey Amazon link

William Morris: A Life for Our Time by Fiona McCarthy Amazon link

Wings over Gloucestershire by John Rennison Amazon link

French Rural History

Peasants into Frenchmen: Modernization of Rural France, 1870 - 1914 by Eugen Weber Amazon link

History and Memory

Albert Speer: His Battle with Truth by Gitta Sereny Amazon link

Ashes in the Wind: The Destruction of Dutch Jewry by Dr Jacob Presser Amazon link

Bad Faith: A Forgotten History of Family and Fatherland by Carmen Callil Amazon link

The Collaborator: The Trial and Execution of Robert Brasillach by Alice Kaplan Amazon link

The Diary of Anne Frank: The Revised Critical Edition by the Netherlands Institute For War Documentation Amazon link

Fallen Soldiers: Reshaping the Memory of the World Wards by George L Mosse Amazon link

In My Brother's Shadow by Uwe Timm Amazon link

Landscape and Memory by Simon Schama Amazon link

The Living Unknown Soldier by Jean-Yves Le Naour Amazon link

Sites of Memory, Sites of Mourning: The Great War in European Cultural History by Jay Winter Amazon link

Strange Defeat: A Statement of Evidence Written in 1940 by Marc Bloch Amazon link

The Vichy Syndrome: History and Memory in France Since 1944 by Henry Rousso Amazon link

Non-fiction

Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee: An Indian History of the American West by Dee Brown Amazon link

The Death and Life of Sylvia Plath by Ronald Hayman Amazon link

The Double Bond: Primo Levi, A Biography by Carole Angier Amazon link

The Fall of Yugoslavia by Misha Glenny Amazon link

The Firstborn by Laurie Lee Amazon link

How to Succeed in Publishing (unpublished) by

Into That Darkness: From Mercy Killing to Mass Murder by Gitta Sereny Amazon link

If This Is a Man/The True by Primo Levi Amazon link

Information Politics on the Web by Richard Rogers Amazon link

Manufacturing Consent: The Political Economy of the Mass Media by Noam Chomsky Amazon link

Media Control: The Spectacular Achievements of Propaganda by Noam Chomsky Amazon link

Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil by John Berendt Amazon link

Moments of Reprieve by Primo Levi Amazon link

The Noonday Demon: An Anatomy of Depression by Andrew Solomon Amazon link

The Periodic Table by Primo Levi Amazon link

Primo Levi: Tragedy of an Optimist by Myriam Anissimov Amazon link

The Problem from Hell: America and the Age of Genocide by Samantha Power Amazon link

Red Sky at Sunrise: Cider with Rosie; As I Walked Out One Midsummer Morning; A Moment of War by Laurie Lee Amazon link

Shake Hands with the Devil: The Failure of Humanity in Rwanda by Romeo Dallaire Amazon link

A Simple Guide to Dreamweaver MX by Belinda Walthew Amazon link

Survival in Auschwitz by Primo Levi Amazon link

A Tranquil Star: Unpublished Stories of Primo Levi by Primo Levi Amazon link

Training Spaniels by Joe Irving Amazon link

The Weather Makers: Our Changing Climate and What It Means for Life on Earth by Tim Flannery Amazon link

The Zanzibar Chest: A Memoir of Love and War by Aidan Hartley Amazon link

Fiction

Captain Hornblower: "Hornblower and the Atropos", The "Happy Return"; A "Ship of the Line" by C.S. Forester Amazon link

Castro's Dream by Lucy Wadham Amazon link

Cold Comfort Farm by Stella Gibbons Amazon link

The Dark Star by Alan Furst Amazon link

Greater Love by Lucy Wadham Amazon link

If Not Now, When? by Primo Levi Amazon link

If Only You Knew by Alice Jolly Amazon link

Kingdom of Shadows by Alan Furst Amazon link

Lark Rise to Candleford: A Trilogy: Trilogy: "Lark Rise";"Over to Candleford";"Candleford Green" by Flora Thompson Amazon link

Les Bienveillantes by Jonathan Littell

Lost by Lucy Wadham Amazon link

The Polish Officer by Alan Furst Amazon link

Small Island by Andrea Levy Amazon link

The Star of the Sea by Joseph O'Connor Amazon link

Suite Francaise by Irene Nemirovsky Amazon link

The Unbearable Lightness of Being by Milan Kundera Amazon link

What the Eye Doesn't See by Alice Jolly Amazon link

The World at Night by Alan Furst Amazon link

Rural Fiction

Perhaps you can help me here.

Aside from Cold Comfort Farm and Lark Rise to Candleford (and you might even disagree with me on this), I am yet to read a novel that captures the lives and experiences of English rural workers - and by rural workers in this context, I do not mean farm owners or tenant farmers - from any period, including the late-20th century and the early 21st.

I have read and enjoyed nearly all of the novels (I think) of Thomas Hardy and George Elliot, but I have never found their depictions of rural workers to be more than somewhat one dimensional. Perhaps you would disagree.

As for Jane Austen and a host of other 19th 'country house' novels, rural workers are just not present at all.

(There is a passage in Mansfield Park where there is some discussion of someone playing the role of a cottager's wife in a drawing-room play but it is decided that such role would be 'an insult'. For more on the (non)characterisation of 19th century rural workers in 19th century English literature, Barry Reay offers an excellent brief overview in his superb book Rural Englands - Amazon Link)

But by my own admission, I don't read much fiction, and I am sure I am missing an essential read.

Please do .

Thank you.