Looking for something new to read? Browse our non-fiction picks for February! Includes titles about the Sutton Hoo ship, an historic Parisian hotel, and great autobiographies.
Want more suggested books? Take a look at our recommendations.
The Experimental Sutton Hoo Ship: Context and Design
Martin Carver
Unearthed from its burial mound, the Sutton Hoo ship offers a profound window into the political, cultural and technological world of seventh-century East Anglia.
On the eve of war in 1939 the remains of a wooden ship nearly 90 feet long were excavated beneath a mound at Sutton Hoo in Suffolk. Only the lines of iron rivets that secured the planking were still in place. This is the largest ship so far recovered from north-eastern Europe in the pre-Viking period.
Now this great vessel is being reconstructed by the Sutton Hoo Ship’s Company on the Woodbridge waterfront. In this book – the first of three – Martin Carver pictures the people that created the ship in the seventh century, and explores their world of beliefs, burial, ornamental metalwork, clothes, and carpentry.
Hotel Exile: Paris in the Shadow of War
Jane Rogoyska
The Hotel Lutetia is a Paris institution, the only ‘grand’ hotel on the city’s bohemian Left Bank.
Ever since it opened, it has served as a meeting place for artists, musicians and politicians. Andre Gide took his lunch here, James Joyce lived in one of its rooms, Picasso and Matisse were regular guests. It has a darker history, too. During one short period, it became a focus for some of the most dramatic and terrible events in recent history.
In the 1930s the Hotel Lutetia attracted intellectuals and political activists, forced to flee their homes when Hitler came to power, who met here with the hope of forming an alternative government. But when war came, Paris was occupied, and the hotel became the headquarters of the German military intelligence service – and the centre of their operation to root out enemies of the Reich.
A Hymn to Life
Gisèle Pelicot
In 2024, Gisèle Pelicot inspired and moved millions of people with her astonishing courage and dignity as she chose to waive her right to anonymity in her legal fight against her husband and the 50 men accused of her sexual assault.
Gisèle Pelicot’s call for shame to change sides in cases of sexual abuse, and the power of the messages she has sent out to the world, have generated an extraordinary public response and moved both women and men all over the world.
The Colour of Home: Growing Up in 1970s Britain
Sajid Javid
‘Run, Paki, Run.’
The words ricocheted off the walls of the Rochdale underpass that connected Sajid Javid’s home and primary school. Even as a five-year-old boy, he had learned that 70s Britain could be a cruel and violent place for those seen as outsiders.
Leaving behind the devastation of Partition, Sajid’s father moved from Punjab to the UK in the 60s. The family held on to many of their Indo-Pakistani traditions, setting them apart and often leading to rejection by their new neighbours.
In this tender but powerful memoir, Sajid Javid shares his story of a childhood marked by poverty, racism and the tension produced by trying to conform to two cultures. These led to run-ins with the police, trouble at school and eventually the risk of estrangement from his family by defying their wish for his arranged marriage in favour of choosing the woman he loved.
Another World
Melvyn Bragg
Having won a scholarship to Oxford University, 18-year-old Melvyn Bragg leaves his hometown of Wigton to travel south and immerse himself in a new and golden world. There, he must find his place amongst the raucous public school boys and the students fresh from National Service, making new friends from varied backgrounds but never forgetting those at home.
Over three formative years – as his tutors, his studies and the people around him all expand his horizons and his sense of what is possible – he takes his next steps into adulthood, surrounded by the old, imposing buildings and libraries (and protests and parties) of the ‘city of dreaming spires’.
In this moment of change, for a young man and for the nation, Bragg looks to the past and the future, and as he studies History in his tutorials, so he remembers the histories of family, friends and lovers that shaped his own story.
Leaving Home: A Memoir in Full Colour
Mark Haddon
Mark Haddon’s parents were not really cut out for the job of having children. They were cut out, respectively, for the jobs of designing abattoirs and keeping a pathologically clean and tidy house. At least Mark had the consolations of The Weetabix Solar System Wallchart, walnut whips and the occasional Babycham.
Astringently honest and scalpel sharp, this is a book about being different and seeing the world differently. It’s about being a cartoonist and a care assistant. It’s about family. It’s about how art, in all its varied forms, provides a way of understanding and coming to terms with the mess of human life. And it’s richly illustrated throughout with images from the author’s childhood.
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