2019’S TOP 50

he thirst for Churchilliana remains insatiable. David Stafford’s Oblivion or Glory (Yale, £20) examines 1921, an allegedly “pivotal year” in the statesman’s life, when he helped negotiate a new settlement in the Middle East, and an end to the Anglo-Irish war. “In these crucial 12 months he laid the foundations for his future glory,” the author claims. Sadly, Stafford’s contention is less than convincing. By going on to support the Gold Standard and oppose Indian independence and the Abdication, Churchill smashed those foundations to dust, before rebuilding them in the truly pivotal year of 1939-40.

Leo McKinstry’s highly original Attlee and Churchill (Atlantic,

In this stunning children’s debut, a young girl hopes her family’s move to a Scottish island will help her father to overcome his depression. (Nosy Crow)

by Charlotte Lo

Simon Heffer’s Staring at God (Random House, £30), is out now. In the Daily Telegraph, Andrew Roberts called it ‘the first serious and really wideranging history of the Home Front during the Great War for decades... filled with revelations’

The Underground Railroad author based his new novel on a Florida school where 55 unmarked graves were found on the black side of the campus. (Fleet)

by Colson Whitehead

Some rockstars shut themselves away from life, but Smith’s engagement with the world only deepens, as this dreamy memoir of 2016 shows. (Bloomsbury)

by Patti Smith