Raising Hare, Chloe Dalton, Canongate, 2025 Raising Hare is Chloe Dalton’s first book and with it she won the Wainwright Prize and the Books are my Bag Readers Award. Raising Hare was also shortlisted for the Women’s Prize for Non-Fiction. It chronicles the author’s extraordinary experience of first saving, then living with a leveret (a … Read more

Charlotte Grey, Sebastian Faulks, Vintage, 1999 Charlotte Grey is one of Faulks’s three novels set in France against the background of the two world wars of the 20th century, the other two being Birdsong and The Girl at the Lion d’Or – it is the last in the trilogy and set largely in Vichy France, … Read more

The White Queen, Philippa Gregory, Simon and Schuster, 2009 The White Queen is the first in Gregory’s series of historical novels concerning the Wars of the Roses; the war between the houses of Lancaster and York, sometimes known as the Cousins War. It’s a turbulent, complex and chaotic period of British history characterised by battles … Read more

Small Pleasures, Clare Chambers, 2020 Clare Chambers wrote Small Pleasures after coming across scientific accounts of tests undertaken in the 1950s and published in The Lancet to investigate whether spontaneous parthenogenesis might be provable in the human female – in lay terms to test whether a ‘virgin birth’ was provable. Her story is woven around … Read more

Hotel du Lac, Anita Brookner, 1984 Anita Brookner dedicated Hotel du Lac to Rosamond Lehmann and the subject matter of this, her most well-known novel, is akin to that of The Weather in the Streets by Lehmann, the first book we shared in our group. Both novels explore the mental and emotional effects of a … Read more

This Boy; a Memoir of Childhood, Alan Johnson, 2013  Alan Johnson, often acclaimed as ‘the best prime minister we never had’, rose through the ranks of the Communication Workers Union and the Labour party to become Home Secretary in 2009 and later Shadow Chancellor of the Exchequer until 2011. This Boy, recounts his childhood growing … Read more

4 November 2025, Out Stealing Horses, Per Petterson, 2003 Out Stealing Horses, is an arresting title and an ambiguous one. Fifteen year old Trond and his enigmatic friend Jon are not stealing horses, merely riding them without permission; it’s a fine distinction. Such ambiguity flows through this novel set in Norway which moves between Trond’s … Read more

7 October 2025, There are Rivers in the Sky, Elif Shafak, 2024 Through an ancient poem, The Epic of Gilamesh and through the connections in a single drop of water, Shafak weaves a story of three lives that cross time, continents and cultures. Arthur born into poverty on the banks of the Thames in Victorian … Read more

2 September 2025, The Salt Path, Raynor Winn We chose this as our September book just a few weeks after the Observer had reported at some length on the inconsistencies between Winn’s account in The Salt Path of walking the south coast path with her husband, Moth and their (the Observer’s) investigation into the circumstances … Read more

5 August 2025, Persuasion, Jane Austen, 1818 Jane Austen is everywhere this year, the 250th anniversary of her birth, and not wishing to miss out we chose her last completed novel, Persuasion, for our high summer read. It is regarded by many as her best novel, although it is not her most well-known or popular; … Read more