The 12 most memorable summer reads chosen by our writers

Telegraph

01-07-2025

As temperatures soar across Europe many are taking shelter with a cool drink and a good book.
As Iris Apfel, the American businesswoman and designer once said: 'A good book is the best accessory.' But what are the best reads for your summer?
We asked Telegraph writers and readers which books they would recommend for your next holiday or sunny afternoon in the garden.
Lucky Jim
Somewhat jammily, I grew up in St Ives, Cornwall. I first read Kingsley Amis 's debut novel on the beach there when I was 13 or 14. And again the next summer. And the next, probably. I thought it was the funniest thing ever written. On some level I still do.
Admittedly, the setting doesn't scream 'holiday': a provincial university in the 1950s, where our hero Jim Dixon works as a junior lecturer in medieval history. He doesn't love his subject ('The hydrogen bomb... [seemed] a light price to pay for no longer being in the Middle Ages.') He doesn't love his colleagues, reserving his least charitable thoughts for his boss, Professor Welch. He does, conveniently, fall in love with the girlfriend of Welch's preening son (the novel's chief antagonist).
The slapstick parts are justly famous: Dixon accidentally setting fire to his bedsheets, pulling faces ('Sex Life in Ancient Rome', 'Evelyn Waugh') and giving a lecture while both drunk and black-eyed. But Lucky Jim is also a portrait of a changing Britain, alive with closely observed social comedy. Amis – who writes about booze, inebriation and hangovers better than anyone – would want you to read it with something cold to hand. Just be careful when you take your sips.
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Five Decembers
It used to be that you were allowed to delude yourself into thinking you could tackle a 'proper' book on holiday. Someone rocking up to the lounger with Stalingrad was to be admired rather than heckled. Mercifully, smartphones have put paid to all of that nonsense.
Although beach reads still need to be respectable enough not to invite ridicule, today they must compete with the box of delights in your pocket. This means books must be short, interesting and funny; and in that order.
Of this year's new fiction, I'd say David Szalay's Flesh and Vincenzo Latronico's Perfection fit the bill. But the only book I have ever had a 100 per cent hit rate with recommending is Five Decembers by James Kestrel, a perfect and bafflingly under-appreciated thriller set in the Second World War.
A Certain Idea of France
by Julian Jackson
Charles de Gaulle changed the course of modern history; Julian Jackson will do the same for how you see historical biography. I once spent a week in Mallorca with a stack of books to hand, and I read just one, day after day: A Certain Idea of France. It was spellbinding, like being shown a vision of someone's soul. Over 900 patient and elegant pages, le Général emerged in all his contradictions.
He could be haughty, silent, bombastic, jovial, often downright weird; he was a decolonising conservative, an anti-fascist with authoritarian tendencies. More than two metres tall and oddly proportioned, he dominated most rooms, and made sure of it.
Roosevelt despised him; Churchill found him exasperating but unignorable. After de Gaulle, initially a mere brigadier general, escaped to London in 1940, turned against the Vichy regime and declared a 'Free France' – as if he were answering destiny's call – he spent his remaining three decades in tireless combat with not only Nazi Germany, but also America ('rootless'), Britain ('perfidious'), and most everybody else. He left politics soon after the war, but returned to save France in 1958, and his decade of rule made that nation, for better or worse, what it is today. He was never a moderate, nor sought to be. 'How can you govern a country,' he once quipped, 'that has 246 varieties of cheese?'
Jackson's book is a masterpiece: it will fill a week by the pool, at least. And if you're a faster reader than that, never fear. You can chase it with his 2023 book France on Trial, a brilliant study of Philippe Pétain – the Maréchal whose surrender de Gaulle refused to obey.
To me, William Boyd is a master storyteller, whose books fuse all the attributes of literary fiction – style, characterisation and intellectual rigour – with compelling narratives and what you might call the unputdownable factor.
None are more unputdownable than Any Human Heart, a meditation on luck and chance which spans the 20th century, told in one glorious sweep through the personal journals of Logan Mountstuart, whose extraordinarily rich and eventful life sees him crossing paths with Virginia Woolf and Ernest Hemingway, recruited as a spy by Ian Fleming, dining with the Duke and Duchess of Windsor and hanging out with Jackson Pollock. I first read it on holiday in Corsica, and in the days spent sightseeing, walking and swimming found myself actively yearning to get back to the villa and the crucial business of finding out what happened next. You couldn't ask for anything more.
Bryant and May
I use my holidays to completely unwind so I avoid all non-fiction; political books are an absolute no no, and as for royal biographies, forget it. Instead, I usually opt for crime, thrillers and mystery books. I've read all of Lee Child's Jack Reacher series and everything Michael Connelly has ever written featuring Harry Bosch.
But during my most recent period of annual leave, I made a new discovery: Bryant & May by Christopher Fowler. Golden Age Detectives in a modern world, Arthur Bryant and John May head the Peculiar Crimes Unit, London's most venerable specialist police team, a division founded during the Second World War to investigate cases that cause national scandal or public unrest. These beautifully written whodunnits have got everything a great holiday page-turner needs: compelling dialogue, plot twists and most importantly: a sense of humour.
by Elif Shafak
The summer read that comes to mind for me is The Island of Missing Trees, by Elif Shafak. It's stayed with me long after I read it a couple of summers ago, and everyone I've recommended it to has since also lapped it up.
Set between a divided Cyprus in the 1970s and London in the 2010s, it follows the clandestine relationship between Kostas, a Greek Cypriot, and Defne, a Turkish Cypriot. Their love, shadowed by the island's conflict, finds an echo decades later as their daughter Ada, living in London, unearths the story of her family's past for a school summer project.
It's part love story, part vivid portrait of Cyprus – the island of fig trees and sun-drenched tavernas – yet the novel never shies away from the pain of the civil war (which the book does a good job teaching you about). Some chapters are hard to read; but Shafak's writing is poetic and easy to follow, making for a perfect pool or beach-side page-turner that still has a bit of grit – whether that be in Nicosia or elsewhere.
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Educated
by Tara Westover
This memoir, published in 2018, is pure escapism. Westover reflects on her childhood growing up in the mountains of Idaho in a deeply religious Mormon family, where she spent much of her time preparing for the world's end. Mental health is at the book's forefront: her brother is often violent and her father is descending into an increasing pit of radicalism. Westover never shies away from the uncomfortable crossover between illness and extreme religion in her parents.
Eventually, at 16, she escapes – on a journey that takes her far from Idaho to Cambridge University, where she grapples with the dynamics of family life both in and out of the home. Her experiences both haunt and inform her later decisions and stay with you long afterwards. It's an excellent read to get lost in. H Wilbor, reader
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The Professor
by Charlotte Brontë
I've just been to a wonderfully peaceful and beautiful Greek island, where I enjoyed my book group's selection of The Professor by Charlotte Brontë – hardly her best-known novel – which follows a love story, mostly set in Brussels. I found it profound, and delicately paced. Jane Dee, Reader
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Mr Einstein's Secretary
by Matthew Reilly
What a refreshing change to read a well-written novel where fact meets fiction. We all know a little about Einstein but in this historical tale, we have a wonderful picture of his life, his love and his neighbour Hanna.
During Hanna's early years, Einstein encourages her inquisitiveness: soon, she only wants to become a brilliant physicist. Because of the war and the loss of her parents (and for her safety), Einstein ships her off to America where she meets successful businessmen, gangsters and leading figures of the Nazi concentration camps.
There's also a twin sister, who crops up in the most extreme of situations – at times, one is frightened of what the book's outcome might be. Hanna herself is well characterised by Reilly: I was rooting for her throughout her trials, tribulations and successes. Throughout this novel I felt enlightened and entertained – it's one to fire up all your emotions. Helen Smith, Reader
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The Climb
by Chris Froome
Chris Froome's book, The Climb, is one of the best sports autobiographies I have ever read, and makes a particularly good summer read. I've since read it twice, and it's spurred on my love for cycling and all things sport. I definitely recommend it for any keen cyclist, gymmer, runner, swimmer or triathlete. Natasha Poole, reader
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