My 14th book of 2025 is ‘All Quiet on the Western Front‘ by Erich Maria Remarque. Translated by Brian Murdoch.
The most famous anti-war novel ever written.
In 1914 a room full of German schoolboys, fresh-faced and idealistic, are goaded by their schoolmaster to troop off to the ‘glorious war’. With the fire and patriotism of youth they sign up. What follows is the moving story of a young ‘unknown soldier’ experiencing the horror and disillusionment of life in the trenches.
My 15th book of 2025 is ‘The Escape Artist’ by Jonathan Freedland.
April 1944. Nineteen-year-old Rudolf Vrba and fellow inmate Fred Wetzler became two of the very first Jews to successfully escape Auschwitz. Evading the thousands of SS men hunting them, Vrba and Wetzler made the perilous journey on foot across Nazi-occupied Poland.
Their mission: to reveal to the world the truth of the Holocaust.
Vrba’s unique testimony would save some 200,000 lives.
But he kept on running – from his past, from his home country, his adopted country, even from his own name. Now, at last, Rudolf Vrba’s heroism can be known.
And I’m still working on my 16th book of 2024 which is ‘Imagine A Country‘ by Val McDermid and Jo Sharp.
The first step on the road to change is to imagine possibility.
Imagine A Country offers visions of a new future from an astonishing array of Scottish voices, from comedians to economists, writers to musicians. Edited, curated and introduced by bestselling author Val McDermid and geographer Jo Sharp, it is a collection of ideas, dreams and ambitions, aiming to inspire change, hope and imagination.
Featuring:
Ali Smith, Phill Jupitus, A.L. Kennedy, Alan Cumming, Kerry Hudson, Greg Hemphill, Carol Ann Duffy, Chris Brookmyre, Alison Watt, Alasdair Gray, Leila Aboulela, Ian Rankin, Selina Hales, Sanjeev Kohli, Jackie Kay, Damian Barr, Elaine C. Smith, Abir Mukherjee, Anne Glover, Alan Bissett, Louise Welsh, Jo Clifford, Ricky Ross, Trishna Singh, Cameron McNeish, Alexander McCall Smith, Carla Jenkins, Don Paterson, and many more . . .
