January Non-fiction Round-up

If you’re looking for a good read this January, let these books transport you – from the shores of South America to the Middle East during the Crusades; from journeys of self-discovery to journeys through the lives of some remarkable people; from Hollywood to family hell and back again.

The Booklist – Winter Warmer

Curl up in front of the fire, and spend some time with a loner in the woods, his cabin insulated by his books; explore the Canadian Northwest with an anthropologist gone native; warm yourself with a wonderful tales from WWII and the Napoleonic Wars; then witness explorers pushing themselves to the limit, all from the comfort of your armchair!

Charles Bukowski: Locked in the Arms of a Crazy Life

We present an excerpt from Charles Bukowski: Locked in the Arms of a Crazy Life, by Howard Sounes. The Pleasures of the Damned, a ‘best of the best’ collection of Bukowski’s poetry, is published this month.

Lisa Hilton on the Queens of England

George Miller talks to Lisa Hilton about her history of English queens and the role they have played in shaping the nature of the English monarchy.

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December Non-fiction Round-up – Best of 2009

2009 was an amazing year for our publishers’ non-fiction lists. Here we focus on just a few of the wide-ranging titles that saw the light of day and the shelves of many.

Graham Farmelo on The Hidden Life of Paul Dirac, Quantum Genius

Graham Farmelo talks about The Strangest Man, his biography of Paul Dirac, the greatest British physicist since Newton – and one of the strangest geniuses of the 20th century, who may have suffered from autism.

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Michael Slater on Charles Dickens

In this Bookhugger exclusive, Michael Slater reads from his new biography of Charles Dickens, the first major life of the novelist to appear in nearly twenty years.

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November Non-fiction Round-up

Memoirs, science and not fiction, fleeting meetings and long memories, interviews with writers, writing on art, commentary on the UK as it is now and the changes it’s gone through… all these and more are to be found in our November non-fiction list.

Oliver Postgate’s Seeing Things: an extract

‘Oliver Postgate was, for my money, the greatest children’s storyteller of the last 100 years. Together, the team of Postgate and Peter Firmin were apparently incapable of creating anything less than timelessly wonderful whenever they sat down to work.’ Charlie Brooker

Dear Me: what would you say to your sixteen-year-old self?

If you were to write a letter to your 16-year-old self, what would it say? In Dear Me: A Letter To My Sixteen-Year-Old Self, some of the world’s best loved personalities have written just such a letter.

The Booklist: After the War

The act of War has affected hundreds of millions of people in so many different ways over the centuries. These memories should never be allowed to be forgotten. Bookhugger’s publishers present some of the most haunting fiction and non-fiction you will ever read…

October non-fiction round-up

Truth can be stranger than fiction: whether it’s the science of the universe, the lives of real people as told to their diaries, or the secret history of Britain, there’s something in our non-fiction round-up for everyone this month.

An interview with John Carey, biographer of William Golding

George Miller talks to celebrated writer and critic John Carey about the first biography of Nobel Prize-winning novelist William Golding.

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Beatrix Potter’s Perthshire

Beatrix Potter needs no introduction – her art and life have been extensively examined in books and film. Potter spent time in Perthshire with her family in 1892, where she met and befriended naturalist Charles McIntosh; The Tale of Peter Rabbit was written in Dunkeld the next year.

It’s… Monty Python Live!

There hasn’t been a new Monty Python book by all the (surviving) Pythons in thirty years. On their fortieth anniversary, Monty Python Live! focuses primarily on their stage show and includes original material written for the book – oral histories, essays – from all living members, as well as much archival material never before in print.

September non-fiction round-up

If fiction’s not your thing, September sees a wealth of fascinating new non-fiction hitting the shelves, including : biographies of characters as diverse as a novelist, a poker star, a movie mogul and a top tailor; and histories of the liberation of Europe and the fall of the Berlin Wall.

Roland Chambers on Arthur Ransome

Long before Swallows and Amazons was published, there had been another Arthur Ransome, famous for different reasons. MI6? Bolshevism? All is revealed in Roland Chambers’ new book, The Last Englishman. Here, he explains more…

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Simon Garfield on Mass Observation

Simon Garfield, author of many books including Our Hidden Lives, We Are At War and Private Battles: How the War Defeated Us – all written in collaboration with Mass Observation – here reveals how every visit to the MO Archive at Sussex University meant the discovery of more new treasures.

Those Who Marched Away

War infects everything it touches. For everyone, whether combatant or not, it is the most testing of times, when the old certainties and moral imperatives cannot be guaranteed. Life hangs by a gossamer thread and many people who would otherwise not keep diaries are moved to record what they see, feel and do.

August non-fiction round-up

Who needs fiction when you’ve got a much loved children’s author who turns out to be a Communist spy, a famous scientist who turned his hand to making money, the making of arguably the greatest-ever jazz album and the perpetual dissolution of one of the world’s maddest rock bands? It can only be our August non-fiction round-up!

The Bookhugger Author Panel: Reportage

Bookhugger asked three top-notch non-fiction writers to tell us about the techniques they use to research, imagine and depict their subjects.

July non-fiction roundup

From rappers Public Enemy to Leon Trotsky, Stalin’s public enemy number one; from the deepest oceans to the tallest mountains; and from France to the Indian subcontinent, you can’t say our round-up of the best summer non-fiction hasn’t got something for everyone.