Alexander Watson

Roger Moorhouse’s tale of Poland’s doomed defence against overwhelming attack by Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union, First to Fight: The Polish War 1939 (Bodley Head), had me enthralled. The book helps remedy some historical amnesia: this brutal invasion is often marginalised in standard histories, despite being the first campaign of Europe’s Second World War and the trigger for Britain to enter the conflict. Moorhouse recounts the horror in large part through anguished Polish eyes. A well-researched, riveting read.

A chilling account of the aftermath of the world’s worst nuclear disaster, Kate Brown’s Manual for Survival: A Chernobyl Guide to the Future (Allen Lane) also moved me. Though some scientists have challenged the book’s more extreme claims about the long-term health and environmental impacts of the Chernobyl Power Plant’s meltdown in 1986, nothing I have read conveys more vividly the accident’s lasting misery. This is captivating, controversial history.

My latest read, and the book that has impressed me most, is David Abulafia’s The Boundless Sea (Allen Lane). Immensely erudite and readable, it is as ‘boundless’ as the waters in its title, exploring human interaction across the world’s waves from the Polynesians who sailed the Pacific tens of thousands of years ago to modern container ships. Trade, settlement and the violence that both could bring are at the heart of this fascinating global story.

Alexander Watson is the author of Ring of Steel (Penguin) and The Fortress: The Great Siege of Przemysl (Allen Lane)