Sheila Heti's brilliant experimental book, Alphabetical Diaries, is funny and often poignant. Above all, it made me think about my own life.

Lizzie Gottlieb’s 2022 documentary Turn Every Page is pure pleasure. It traces the decades-long relationship between her father Robert, the most distinguished editor in American letters, and Robert Caro, the greatest biographer of all.

Gabriel Josipovici’s 100 Days is an account both of the first three months of the pandemic, and of the author’s deep engagement with culture during his long life.

Donna Leon, at the age, has written a ‘memoir’ in the form of 30 vignettes about her life and cultural interests.

Martin Doyle’s Dirty Linen: the Troubles in my Home Place is a powerful mixture of memoir, journalism and history. In it, the lives of people murdered in a single parish during the Troubles are given due attention.

My Father’s House, Joseph O’Connor’s fictional treatment of the life of Monsignor Hugh O’Flaherty, is particularly brilliant in its evocation of Rome and the Vatican under Nazi occupation.

Nicholas Royle’s White Spines: confessions of a book collector is his account of his obsessive collection of Picador books over many years, and it’s funny, self-aware and self-deprecating - a delight for those of us who love the physicality of books.

Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie’s latest (very short) book recounts how her father’s death in 2020 hit it brutally, in ways she was unprepared for.