TEAM OF RIVALS
by Doris Kearns Goodwin
Penguin, £14.99
One of the best books written about politics. It brilliantly tells the story of Abraham Lincoln’s remarkable rise and how he built his administration around his rivals for the Republican nomination. It is a horrible thought that Donald Trump could now sleep in the Lincoln bed and the book’s a great reminder of a very different presidential character.
MADAME BOVARY
by Gustave Flaubert
Penguin, £8.99
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The story of doctor’s wife Emma Bovary, her affairs and her attempts to escape a banal provincial life. It made me fall in love with the French language, a love that’s endured rather longer than hers did for her husband.
DE GAULLE
by Aidan Crawley
Out of print
When Michael Foot died, his family asked friends to help themselves to some of his books. This, published in the late 1960s, was one of the gems we found. It includes a wonderful depiction of De Gaulle’s complicated, rich relationship with Churchill.
THIS SPORTING LIFE
by David Storey
Vintage, £8.99
This story of the tough life of a rugby league player is still the best novel about sport. I have finally had a go at a sporting novel myself, Saturday Bloody Saturday, co-authored with former Burnley player Paul Fletcher.
CHASE THE RAINBOW
by Poorna Bell
Simon & Schuster, £12.99
As a campaigner for Time To Change, I am pleased to say there has been a glut of mental health books recently and this is one of the most powerful. Poorna’s husband Rob killed himself in 2015 and this is superb at stripping the stigma surrounding depression.
THE GREATEST COMEBACK
by David Bolchover
Biteback, £20
This so gripped me that I read it in a single day. It is about Béla Guttmann, a Hungarian Jew and Holocaust survivor who became one of the first great European football coaches.