My book consumption has experienced an uptick in seriousness and organisation in ‘25. I’ve always enjoyed reading, typically getting through ten to twenty books per year. Up to now the choice of reading matter has been rather random. I would see a review somewhere, or often just pick up a book in a bookshop. The subject matter is mostly fact rather than fiction with history, particularly of the 20th C, and even more particularly of WWII being my favorite genre. Popular science books are another favourite, as are memoirs and biographies of my favorite bands and musicians.

This year, though, a couple of things nudged me to become more deliberate in my reading choices. The first was almost accidental. I started the year half way through Andrew Robert’s excellent biography of George III, which I very much enjoyed. Immediately after, I read Memoirs of a Georgian Rake by William Hickey, recommended by a speaker at Lewes Speaker’s Festival. I found that staying in the same era for two books was very rewarding. I read about the same events from different perspectives and felt comfortably immersed in the late 18th C. The next book I rather randomly picked off the shelf was Max Hastings’ Catastrophe about the outbreak of WWI. I wasn’t far into it before it occurred to me to do the same thing: read all the books about WWI that I had on my bookshelves. I’d recently inherited much of my Dad’s Folio Society collection which included the memoirs of Robert Graves and Seigfried Sasson, so it seemed an obvious choice to read those. Now that I had a project called “WWI” I started to look for lists of the best books from and about the period. This led me to Nick Lloyd’s massive Western Front, as well as the German memoirs All Quiet on the Western Front and Storm of Steel, and not forgetting Vera Brittain’s superb Testament of Youth.

Another influence on my reading was Times columnist James Marriott’s newsletter, especially one on “how to read”. He made several excellent suggestions, but the one which really struck home was the observation that older books are often better, and that the ones which have survived the passage of time are often the best. I realised that I’ve been a sucker for the publishing industry’s marketing efforts, especially of new books, and that I would be much better off finding the consensus on the best books on a subject and then buying a good quality used hardback from eBay. Also if a book has attained the status of a classic then there’s a good chance it will have been reproduced by the Folio Society. These can be had on eBay for very reasonable money, and often unread in perfect condition. There’s a pleasure to be had in sitting down with a really beautifully produced book, so now I’m committed to avoiding paperbacks if at all possible and favouring second hand books over new ones. I’ve also been trying to adopt another point that James Marriott made, and that is to read for longer. Rather than ten pages at a time I now aim for 30 to 50. I’m pretty sure I’d allowed my attention span to be ruined by over exposure to short YouTube videos, and it’s been a bit of effort to force the window back up to an hour or more, but also less difficult than I thought it would be. It also means that I can read more books of course.

In total I completed 20 books during ‘25, two on the Georgian period, 14 on WWI, a couple of rock autobiographies, and just recently a couple on evolution. The theme of the year has been WWI. It’s fair to say that I knew very little about the conflict at the start of the year. Of course it’s primarily a story of the greatest calamity of the 20th century, or a least the second greatest. A story of huge human suffering, especially for the poor infantry on the Western Front. The war memoirs, both British and German, all attest to that. The start of the war is the greatest tragedy because it could so easily have been averted or at least attenuated to a significant degree. The key actors were the German military and political elite. It seems clear that a more intelligent and sophisticated statesman, say a Bismark, could have orchestrated a very positive outcome for Germany. If Germany had declared Belgian neutrality inviolate, and announced that it had no designs on France, then for sure it would have been attacked from the East by Russia coming to Austria’s defence, and by France from the West coming to Russia’s aid, but it would have kept Britain out of the war and fought on a purely defensive basis. Germany in the actual war defeated Russia, and France alone would have soon found itself bogged down in static trench warfare on their common border, and without the galvanising national motive of being attacked, would probably have sued for peace. Germany would have emerged as the hegemon of Europe, with huge prestige for having acted purely defensively and with the ability to impose its political vision on central and eastern Europe. So much fun imagining counterfactuals. I’ve long been fascinated with the other world war (the second), but now reading about WWI makes it much easier to understand. What is incredible is that just 20 years after the end of this European slaughter they had to prepare to do it all over again. How must it have felt? It’s as if we had just ended a devastating war in 2005 and were now preparing for a repeat!

Just for fun I’m going to nominate a book of the year. This is a difficult choice because there are so many candidates. If I was going to choose the one that had made me adjust how I think about the world, and especially my own consciousness, it would have to be Max Bennett’s superb A Brief History of Intelligence. But I think that’s a special case in a way because none of the other books have that kind of theme. Of the Georgians, William Hickey’s wonderful romp through late 18th Century London was an absolute joy, and for a real insight into the home front during WWI Vera Brittain’s Testament of Youth is a justified classic, but I think I’ll give book-of-the-year to T.E.Lawrence’s Seven Pillars of Wisdom. It led me into a real and inner world so alien, so romantic and horrifying in equal measure, that it has to get top spot.

For ‘26 I intend to continue my thematic reading by moving on to the interwar period. I’m looking forward to reading how Britain and the world slowly recovered, but also how the unresolved contradictions eventually wound up to 1939. I already have a large reading list for this, including for the first time a number of novels. But before I start I’m allowing myself a winter of contemporary catch-up, to read some books on more current issues.