But lots of people don’t read that much fiction (blokes, I’m looking at you) so here are my top-ten non fiction books of all time…
9. Reach For the Ground by Jeffrey Bernard (1996)
Notorious for the chaotic, alcohol-soaked Soho lifestyle that provided a cast of unforgettable characters in his weekly Low Life column in The Spectator magazine over two decades, journalist and drinker Jeffrey Bernard, pictured in his beloved Coach & Horses, was immortalised by his friend and fellow hack Keith Waterhouse in his 1989 play Jeffrey Bernard Is Unwell. This collection of Bernard’s best work, subtitled The Downhill Struggle of Jeffrey Bernard, retains the ability to shock and delight, tempered with a sense of growing doom at its author’s self-destructive tendencies (his leg was amputated following complications from diabetes and he died aged just 65). A window into the forgotten world of Soho in its prime.
Buy Reach For the Ground by Jeffrey Bernard
(Image: Express Newspapers)
7. In Cold Blood by Truman Capote (1965)
The US writer and socialite is credited by many for inventing (or at least radically popularising) the genre of true crime with his 1965 book about the murders of the Clutter family in rural Kansas. Having arrived two days after the funerals, over the next four years of painstaking research, Capote became acquainted with everyone involved in the investigation and with the friends and neighbours of the victims. When two ex-convicts, Perry Smith and Richard Hickock, were arrested for the murders, Capote befriended them too. They were both executed on April 14, 1965. The book made Capote a literary superstar, though there were claims of exaggeration and sensationalism. To this day it remains an utterly gripping read that will rib you of sleep.
Buy In Cold Blood by Truman Capote
(Image: Bettmann Archive)