The Last Englishman, by Roland Chambers

Arthur Ransome was, from 1930 to the early 1960s, what J. K. Rowling is today: the much-loved author of a series of children’s books which shaped the imagination of a generation. Swallows and Amazons and its sequels described a cozy, nostalgic Utopia, in which Ransome’s heroes had blameless fun in the Lake District, sailing boats, pitching camp and playing at pirates. Collectively, they established his reputation as a champion of old-world values in the final days of the British empire.

Long before Swallows and Amazons was published, however, there had been another Arthur Ransome, famous for different reasons. Between 1917 and 1924, as Russian correspondent for the Daily News and Manchester Guardian, he was an uncritical apologist for the Bolshevik regime, with unique access to the revolutionary leaders. As the Red Army engaged with an Allied invasion of Russia, Ransome was conducting a love affair with Evgenia Shelepina, private secretary to Leon Trotsky, then Soviet Commissar for War. As the intimate friend of Karl Radek, the Bolshevik Chief of Propaganda, he denied the Red Terror and compared Lenin to Oliver Cromwell. At Whitehall, Ransome was accused of being the paid agent of a hostile power and only narrowly escaped prosecution for treason.

How did this bluff, in many ways conservative Englishman, associated by millions with nothing more threatening than messing about in boats, become such an ardent defender of the Bolshevik experiment? Was Ransome a double agent or, as he liked to insist, an innocent go-between? Roland Chambers, in a masterly narrative, explores Ransome’s career as a struggling writer in Edwardian London, his disastrous first marriage and flight to Russia, and his remarkable high-wire act as British agent and ‘mouthpiece of the Bolsheviki’. Later, as author of Swallows and Amazons, Ransome’s triumph was to erase the entire episode from the public consciousness, just as he erased all uncomfortable episodes, including his relationship with his only daughter. Amongst his many devoted readers, he is still best remembered as ‘Captain Flint’, a bachelor pirate retired to a houseboat in the north country. Few of his former friends within the Soviet Union showed a greater flair for historical revision.

The Fallen, by Dave Simpson

Ever been held hostage in a dressing room with your parents? Ever been thrown off the bus in the middle of a Swedish forest or abandoned at a foreign airport? Ever been asked to play at one of the UK’s biggest music festivals with musicians you’ve just met who are covered in blood, or taken part in a ‘recording session’ in a speeding Transit? If so you’ve probably been in The Fall. Dave Simpson made it his mission to track down everyone who has ever played in Britain’s most berserk, brilliant group. He uncovers a changing Britain, tales of madness and genius, and wreaks havoc on his personal life.

Bicycle Diaries, by David Byrne

Since the early 1980s, David Byrne has been riding a bike as his principal means of transportation in New York City. Two decades ago, he discovered folding bikes, and starting taking them on tour. Byrne’s choice was made out of convenience rather than political motivation, but the more cities he saw from his bicycle, the more he became hooked on this mode of transport and the sense of liberation it provided. Convinced that urban biking opens one’s eyes to the inner workings and rhythms of a city’s geography and population, Byrne began keeping a journal of his observations and insights.

An account of what he sees and who he meets as he pedals through metropolises from Berlin to Buenos Aires, Istanbul to San Francisco, Manila to New York, Bicycle Diaries also records Byrne’s thoughts on world music, urban planning, fashion, architecture, cultural dislocation, and much more, all with a highly personal mixture of humour, curiosity, and humility. Part-travelogue, part-journal, part-photo album, Bicycle Diaries is an eye-opening celebration of seeing the world at bike level.

Stepping Stones, by Dennis O’Driscoll

Widely regarded as the finest poet of his generation, Seamus Heaney is the subject of numerous critical studies; but no book-length portrait has appeared until now. Through his own lively and eloquent reminiscences, Stepping Stones retraces the poet’s steps from his first exploratory testing of the ground as an infant to what he called his ‘moon-walk’ to the podium at which he received the 1995 Nobel Prize in Literature. It also fascinatingly charts his post-Nobel life and is supplemented with a large number of photographs, many from the Heaney family album and published here for the first time.

The Blue Moment, by Richard Williams

There have been many books about Miles Davis, one of the twentieth century’s most protean musical figures, but The Blue Moment is unlike any other work on the subject.

Richard Williams takes as his starting point the making of Kind of Blue, Davis’s most celebrated album, and shows how movements in art, philosophy and music fed into this meditative, melancholy masterpiece, first released in 1959. The haunting palettes of Picasso, Matisse and Yves Klein influenced the mood of a culture that valued the colour blue so highly; and the blues, mediated by jazz and other kinds of music, had become the sound that signified ‘coolness’.

Davis’s album was profoundly influential on his bandmate John Coltrane, and they both haunted the avant-garde composers Terry Riley, Steve Reich and Lamonte Young, who in turn were responsible for transmitting that influence into rock music, touching artists as diverse as John Cale and the Velvet Underground, The Who, Soft Machine, Brian Eno and early Roxy Music, and Talking Heads and U2. The Allman Brothers reworked passages from Kind of Blue in their long improvised jams; and the Grateful Dead’s extended concert performances owed much to that strain of jazz. James Brown’s most copied riff, from ‘Cold Sweat’, was a reworking of ‘So What’.

Read an interview with Richard Williams

Between the Monster and the Saint, by Richard Holloway

Being human isn’t easy. We might think that consciousness and free will give us control over our lives but our minds are unpredictable places. We are susceptible to forces we don’t understand. We are capable of inflicting immense cruelty on one another and yet we also have the capacity to be tender, to empathise, to feel. In his thought-provoking new book Richard Holloway holds a mirror up to the human condition. By drawing on a colourful and eclectic selection of writings from history, philosophy, science, poetry, theology and literature, Holloway shows us how we can stand up to the seductive power of the monster and draw closer to the fierce challenge of the saint.

Newton and the Counterfeiter, by Thomas Levenson

After he had become the most famous scientist in Europe for his theories of planetary motion and gravity, Isaac Newton felt he had a right to earn more serious money than a college Fellow could ever make. He left his sheltered rooms in Cambridge University and accepted the job of running the Royal Mint. This was no sinecure: England’s currency was in crisis. No one had faith in it. The nation’s entire stock of coins was recalled and new ones issued, a mammoth task that Newton carried out with incredible precision. He spent the last years of his life dealing with money and manufacturing it, speculating with it and losing it.

At the Mint he had extraordinary powers as the defender of the King’s currency. Counterfeiting was a crime that the law equated with treason, and it was Newton’s job to hunt down those who faked His Majesty’s coins. Newton was drawn into a deadly struggle with the most skilful counterfeiter of the age, Thomas Chaloner. Here was a man who not only got away with passing dud money but accused Newton of incompetence, and tried to ease him out of the Mint so that he could take it over. Chaloner wrote pamphlets denouncing Newton’s stewardship and taunting him; he was even given a hearing by Parliament.

But Chaloner had no idea who he was taking on. Newton pursued his enemy with the cold, implacable logic that he brought to his scientific research.

Levenson sets this dark tale against the backdrop of early eighteenth century London with its sewers running down the middle of the streets, its packed houses, smoke and fog, and its great port, into which ships were sailing with all the wealth of the world. This is a compelling book about crime, science and money, and transforms our image of Britain’s greatest scientist.

Read an interview with Thomas Levenson

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