JOHN DAVIE, who taught at St Paul’s School and Trinity College, Oxford, wears his learning lightly in Greek to Us: The fascinating Ancient Greek that shapes our world (Bloomsbury, £14.99 (£13.50); 978-1-3994-2479-0). The book, with a foreword by Harry Mount, is presented as an etymological exercise, but becomes an accessible introduction to Ancient Greek civilisation.
A SCIENTIST on a scientist is Crick: A mind in motion — from DNA to the brain by Matthew Cobb, Professor Emeritus of Zoology at the University of Manchester (Profile, £30 (£27); 978-1-80081-105-8). This substantial hardback is likely to be the definitive biography of Francis Crick, whose discovery, with Jim Watson, of the structure of DNA, is only part of a story of restless inquiry and intellectual collaboration, in which the nature of the discoveries is expertly expounded.
GARY L. STILES, in A Prelude to Immortality: Churchill’s “My Early Life”, explores the writing and reception of the autobiography that won Churchill the 1953 Nobel Prize for Literature (Unicorn, £35 (£31.50); 978-1-917458-27-6). Many colour plates of the translated editions.
DAN CRUICKSHANK’s The English House: A history in eight buildings, calls at Pallant House, Chichester, the Boundary Estate, Shoreditch, and other homes from Spitalfields to Toxteth (Hutchinson Heinemann, £26 (£23.40); 978-1-529-15245-6). There are two sections of colour plates, and the discussion broadens out from those ten buildings and the lives of their first occupants.
ALED JONES’s Aled’s Book of Blessings for 2026 is a daily “commonplace book” with spaces for readers’ own notes (Hodder & Stoughton, £16.99 (£15.30); 978-1-399-82109-4). The well-known singer and television presenter offers a homely companion with the accent on uplift and inspiration.
READERS of crime novels may enjoy Agatha Christie Ltd’s The Official Agatha Christie Poirot Puzzle Book (Laurence King, £16.99 (£15.30); 978-1-3996-3507-3). The book offers 100 puzzles and tests readers’ knowledge of ten famous Poirot mysteries.
HANNAH FRENCH, a Radio 3 presenter who was a lecturer at the Royal Academy of Music for 12 years, is the author of The Rolling Year: Listening to the seasons with Vivaldi (Faber & Faber, £20 (£18); 978-0-571-39199-8), published to coincide with the 300th anniversary of the composition of the violin concertos The Four Seasons by the Italian priest, whose manuscript is lost. The work has long been a “gateway into classical music”, and the author takes the reader further on in Baroque musicology with many intriguing insights and sidelights that now fall within its purview.
CHRIS NEWENS has cooked and eaten his way around Paris in a bid to find a defining dish for each arrondissement. In Moveable Feasts: Paris in twenty meals (Profile Books, £18.99 (£17.09); 978-1-80522-420-4) he dives beneath the surface to give an original travel memoir with the imaginative symbolism of food, complete with recipes. Hemingway was right about the French capital’s enduring appeal and the magic of its food.
