THE BEST NON-FICTION
THE GIFT OF A RADIO
(Penguin) February IN THIS unselfpitying memoir, Radio 4 Today presenter Webb describes growing up in the 1970s with his posh-but-poor, cannabis-growing mother and a stepfather diagnosed by a doctor as ‘stark, staring mad’. Webb never met his biological father — BBC newsreader Peter Woods — although his mum did point him out on TV.
Bullied at his ‘lawless’ Quaker boarding school, Webb believes only his size and skill at rugby — and his love of radio — enabled him to cope.
ONE DAY IN APRIL by Jenni Hicks
(Seven Dials) March A MOTHER who lost both her daughters, 19-year-old Sarah and 15-year-old Vicki, in the 1989 Hillsborough disaster looks back at the tragedy — and long battle for justice — that has shaped the rest of her life.
THE PALACE PAPERS by Tina Brown
(Penguin) April TINA BROWN was 25 and editing Tatler when Charles and Diana got together. Her staff moved in their circles and snagged all the scoops. Now she explores how the Royal Family has survived since Diana’s death.
EVERY FAMILY HAS A STORY Julia Samuel (Penguin Life) April
BORN into the wealthy Guinness family, the 61-yearold psychotherapist became a good friend of Princess Diana, is godmother to Prince George and is believed to have advised Meghan Markle on coping with life in the Royal Family.
Having previously written books on grief and change, she now offers insight into how family dynamics affect our lives, with the aftershocks of love and loss rattling down the generations.
QUEEN OF OUR TIMES Robert Hardman
(Macmillan) March FOR the 70th year of the Queen’s reign, royal expert Robert Hardman has written the definitive biography of Elizabeth II, including new interviews with world leaders. Given access to previously unseen papers, Hardman delves deep into the enigma of a woman who is ‘shy but with a steely self-confidence . . . devout, indulgent, outwardly reserved, inwardly passionate, unsentimental, inquisitive, young at heart and committed to the future’. This is a woman who sat stoically alone at her husband’s funeral, then mustered the strength to tell leaders at COP26 that this was their chance to be ‘written in history books yet to be printed’.
LEFT ON TENTH by Delia Ephron
(Penguin) April DELIA EPHRON struggled to cope with the ‘sadmin’ after her husband of 33 years died of cancer in 2015. Triggered by frustrated attempts to cancel his landline, the screenwriter of You’ve Got Mail wrote an article about the inhumanity of customer service.
In response — as if from one of her own movie scripts — she received a letter from a man she had dated 50 years earlier. Further correspondence revealed he had also been widowed and the pair were caught up in a whirlwind romance when Ephron was diagnosed with leukaemia.
Based on the letters, emails and texts sent between her bereavement in 2015 and the beginning of her remission in 2018, this promises to be a frank, witty and uplifting memoir.
BE MY BABY by Ronnie Spector
(Macmillan) March THE ‘original bad girl of rock’n’roll’ grew up dressing tough and singing loudly to scare away bullies. But she ended up married to one. This traumatic memoir describes how her violent husband and producer Phil Spector controlled her during their seven years of marriage — even threatening to hire a hitman to kill her. She turned to drink and fled, barefoot. John Lennon got her back into the studio, where she sang her way back to sobriety.
BACK IN THE DAY by Melvyn Bragg
(Sceptre) May NOW in his early 80s, the gruffvoiced arts broadcaster and author has written his first memoir. It looks back at his youth in Cumbria, raised above a pub and expected to leave school at 15.
It also details the terrifying breakdown he suffered at 13, during which he had out-ofbody experiences.
He recovered through reading and became one of the first working-class grammar school boys to go to Oxford.