Browse our new non-fiction books for September! Includes titles by Michael Morpurgo, Andrew Pettegree, Rachel Morley and more.
Want more suggested books? Take a look at our recommendations.
The Bookshop: A History of Bookselling from the Dawn of Print to the 21st Century
Andrew Pettegree
Bookshops are a comforting sight on our high streets, warm and welcoming spaces in which to browse, meet friends and occasionally buy books. They may feel timeless, yet their history is a restless and turbulent one, filled with as many entrepreneurial street hawkers and illicit trades as with beloved institutions.
This work explores the evolution of bookselling from the cramped collectors’ shops frequented by Samuel Pepys to the radical feminist bookshops of the 70s, the rise of monolithic chains and the new world of online selling.
Connecting stories and lives that span centuries, countries and continents, ‘The Bookshop’ brings us into beloved bookshops of today and looks forward to the possible experience of booksellers of tomorrow.
Down Burrow Lane: Life and Love on the Farm
Michael Morpurgo
‘One day can change a whole life – whether you are standing by a river looking at a heron, or watching a buzzard soaring over a hillside, or learning about friendship away from home for the first time.’
Fifty years ago, Michael and Clare Morpurgo packed their young family into a car in London and set off for a remote farm in rural Devon, down a narrow track called Burrow Lane. It was on this magical farm that Michael, then a young schoolteacher, became a writer.
Over the years, it would inspire many of his best-loved books, including ‘War Horse’ and ‘Private Peaceful’. Here, Michael and Clare raised their family – and, in many ways, grew up themselves. They also welcomed more than 100,000 children from towns and cities to experience life in the countryside through their charity, Farms for City Children.
This is the remarkable love story of Michael and Clare, and an account of the joys and hardships of life on the farm across five decades.
Through the Windows of an Ordinary House: A History of England
Ian Mortimer
This is the story of Mearsdon, the house where Ian Mortimer lives in Moretonhampstead, on the edge of Dartmoor.
We very rarely have a continuous account of a particular place over a long stretch of history, but Mortimer has a documentary record of all the owners who lived there since the 1260s – although the origins of the building probably date back to the eleventh century.
Blending the broadest national history and the most intimate local events with a description of changing daily life from the Norman Conquest to the present day, Mortimer acquaints us with the people who passed through the house – from its first known owner, John the Palmer, to the folklore collector Charlie Laycock, who turned the house into a museum in the early twentieth century, to Mortimer’s family living there today.
And along the way he shows how national events affected a rural community in deepest Devon over a time span of 900 years.
Church Crawling: The Secret Lives and Hidden Stories of England’s Churches
Rachel Morley
The poet John Betjeman coined the phrase ‘church crawling’ to describe his days out visiting churches.
In the spirit of Betjeman, Rachel Morley’s book captures the magical experience of poking around a dusty village church, only to have it transform – through her expert eyes – into a portal to the past, one that brings England’s people and history to life in the most colourful, moving and unexpected ways.
Through their wall-paintings and monuments, their graffiti and plaques, their jumble of furniture and curios, Morley shows these buildings to be the expression of centuries of communal memory and folk culture – time capsules of connection to ancient and medieval ways of thinking, to revolutions and wars, to lives both glorious and humble.
Make Me Well: A Quest to Understand the Confusing World of Wellness
Xand Van Tulleken
There has never been a more confusing time to try to be healthy. In the past decade, the healthcare sector has witnessed a remarkable surge in innovation: drug design, genomics and diagnostic technology have all changed almost beyond recognition.
Simultaneously, there has been a significant expansion in consumer health services, including the supplement industry, blood testing, consumer genomics and wearable technology, which claim to improve ‘wellness’ rather than curing or preventing specific disease states.
For a typical consumer this is both confusing, as the health and wellness industries are almost indistinguishable, and expensive, as consumer health emphasises personalised products, often sold on a subscription basis.
Xand van Tulleken investigates the new Wild West of the wellness industry, demystifying a landscape dominated by three products – supplements, blood testing, and wearable technology.
House of Cromwell: Britain’s Forgotten Dynasty
Miranda Malins
It is astonishing that Thomas Cromwell and Oliver Cromwell – two of the most powerful, impactful and controversial commoners in British history – came from the same family.
They came from nothing and fell back to nothing, but not before they had walked with giants, changing everything as architects of the early modern world. Thomas made England, Oliver made Britain.
Miranda Malins takes readers on an extraordinary journey through two centuries of history, from the Wars of the Roses to the accession of the Hanoverians, to delight readers who love to explore family dynamics, dynastic succession and discover overlooked voices from the past – particularly those of women.
Empire at the Edge of the World: Endurance and Madness in the High Arctic
Giles Milton
1913, the Arctic circle. Charismatic explorer Vilhjalmur Stefansson is obsessed with a frozen speck of land in the Siberian Arctic: Wrangel Island. Believing that whoever possesses it would control the future – air routes, resources, even the balance of power in the northern hemisphere, he takes an impossible gamble.
Dispatching a small, ill-equipped venture to stake a frozen colony in Britain’s name, it is a triumph of brilliance, ego and breathtaking hubris. What follows is a catastrophe of starvation, madness, and geopolitical risk. As winter seals the island in ice, relief ships fail to arrive and tensions among the colonists spiral toward despair.
While diplomats spar and warships steam north, the settlers are left to endure scurvy, polar bears, and the terror of abandonment. At the centre of it all stands one unlikely survivor – a young Inuit seamstress who can outlast them all.
Portuguese 
English 
Polish 
Lithuanian 
Romanian 
Bengali