Looking for something new to read? Browse our non-fiction picks for March! Includes gripping biographies, inspirational stories, and practical guides.
Want more suggested books? Take a look at our recommendations.
Enough Said
Alan Bennett
This is Alan Bennett’s fourth collection of diaries and prose. Covering the turbulent years 2016 to 2024, the diaries take us through lockdown, Brexit, the reign of Johnson, the rise of Trump and the death of the Queen.
In between, we take the train with him back and forth to Yorkshire, celebrate the herons, the newts and the street fairs, and lament the scarcity of curlews, the closure of the last local bank and the deteriorating welfare state. There is the premiere of Allelujah!, the revived Talking Heads, the publication of two Sunday Times bestsellers and the filming of The Choral.
2024 is the year that Alan turns ninety; he reflects on old age and the importance of luck. He looks back to childhood and recalls an idyllic wartime month as an evacuee.
A Road for All Seasons: From Mull to Dover
Harry Bucknall
A tumultuous period in British politics left writer Harry Bucknall questioning whether he really knew the place he called home.
Propelled by a growing desire to better understand his island nation, Harry decided to undertake a pilgrimage of sorts; he embarked on a series of four walks across Britain that would mirror the changing seasons, covering a distance of nearly 1,600 miles.
From fresh and heady spring through to the gloriously crisp winter months, Harry journeyed across Britain visiting cities, towns and vast swathes of the countryside from Mull to Sunderland and Aberystwyth to Lowestoft, meeting a host of diverse and charismatic characters along the way as he strove to uncover the beating heart of the nation.
British Gardens
Monty Don
What do our gardens say about us? Monty Don has spent many years travelling the world, from America to Japan, from Italy and the Adriatic to Spain and the Mediterranean, getting under the skin of a country through its gardens and gardening traditions.
Here, he finally brings his focus to home, journeying from the northern tip of Scotland to the Cornish coast, seeking to understand what our gardens tell us about ourselves as a nation. Encompassing historical gardens and public parks, mountains and seascapes, urban gardens and rural nurseries, glasshouses and community plots, each encounter is another link in a larger story of British identity: marks of ingenuity, eccentricity, and adaptation to changing environments.
Rasputin: And the Downfall of the Romanovs
Antony Beevor
How could a barely literate peasant from Siberia determine the fate of the world? Undoubtedly, the so-called ‘mad monk’ Rasputin bewitched Tsar Nicholas II and his wife, Alexandra. Yet their strange and scandalous relationship conceals a riddle, one that casts an intriguing light on the controversial ‘great man’ theory of history.
Rasputin was a devoted monarchist, not a revolutionary. He had no official position, no forces at his command. Nevertheless, he contributed more to the fall of the Romanov dynasty than any other individual. So demoralised was the Tsarist officer corps by stories of corruption, to say nothing of the rumours of his debauchery with the Empress – and even her daughters – that when the February Revolution broke out, not a sword was raised in defence of the regime.
Just as Rasputin cast a spell over the Romanovs, his legend has bewitched historians. This book examines his extraordinary life and legacy.
The Waterlands: Follow a Raindrop from Source to Sea
Stephen Rutt
When the heaviest droplets of ice can no longer be held, the first raindrop slips from the sky and plunges, down through the damp, cold air, thawing as it plummets. Splashing into the sodden hillside, rainfall merging with river source, it flows for the first time.
‘The Waterlands’ is a story of water, revealing its natural rhythms and miraculous power. Follow a raindrop as it flows through diverse waterscapes: river sources in the upland moors; saltmarsh-flanked firths and estuaries; serene and spectacular lochs; crystal-clear chalk streams; blanket bogs that are both land and liquid, a thin skin of peat over millennia-old water.
On this epic journey, award-winning writer Stephen Rutt visits these places where life flourishes, revealing how water shapes the land, shapes our lives – and how we shape it in return.
Bloody Dangerous: Fifty Missions Over Germany
Colin Bell
Flight-Lieutenant Colin Bell’s book is a powerful and inspiring portrait of bravery in action, full of touching admiration for his RAF comrades – one in four of whom were killed.
He paints a vivid picture of what it was like to fly a Mosquito in 50 raids over Germany, 13 of them to Berlin itself. There, coned by searchlights, he experienced the terror of being tracked by 88 mm radar-controlled anti-aircraft guns when he wasn’t being chased by night-fighting Messchersmitt 262s – the only aircraft in the German armoury capable of outrunning the Mosquito. Bell suffered engine failures, fuel starvation, near fatal ice, many hits to his plane and, on one occasion, an explosion so close there was shrapnel in his parachute and burn marks on his navigator’s flying suit.
As a member of the elite Pathfinder 608 squadron he was part of the force that, arguably, did more than any other bombing unit to bring about the Nazis’ final surrender.
Lifeboat at the End of the World
Dominic Gregory
Do you really think all lives are worth saving?
Lifeboat at the End of the World is the first book to depict the experience of what it is like to volunteer on a lifeboat: the smells of the water, the little knots when an alarm comes, how the crew is trained, the teamwork and trust, the ethos of the service. But it is when inflatable dinghies – overloaded with people – begin arriving on the shores of Dungeness that the lifeboat crew must face perhaps their greatest test.
Dominic Gregory’s non-fiction writing offers extraordinary power and immediacy. While most of us will never serve in a lifeboat, we might find ourselves thankful for their unflinching and fearless assistance at sea.
The Productive Garden: An Essential Guide Towards Self-Sufficiency
Stephanie Hafferty
Swap your trolley for a trug in this self-sufficiency bible. Written by no-dig gardening guru and one of the 100 Leading Women in Horticulture 2025, Stephanie Hafferty, The Productive Garden provides practical, simple, resourceful and enjoyable ways of creating a more self-sufficient lifestyle.
In The Productive Garden, use permaculture principles to learn everything you need to know about growing abundant and useful crops, and how to make the most of what you produce.
The Wealth Habit: Small Changes That Will Make You Rich
Ken & Mary Okoroafor
The Wealth Habit is a groundbreaking, behaviour-driven approach to wealth-building that rewires the way you think about money, turning financial success into a series of tiny, effortless, repeatable actions.
Instead of overwhelming readers with rigid budgets or complex investment strategies, this book reveals how small, daily financial moves compound into life-changing wealth – no matter where you start.
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