Five writers on the five books they’d give for Christmas

Books are the best kind of Christmas present, and we don’t want to argue about it. When you give someone you love an unputdownable novel, a juicy biography, a captivating history book or a set of letters or poems, what you are also giving is hours and hours of pleasure. That’s why five of us writers are sharing our top five suggestions for great books to give as gifts this Christmas. Just try not to steal them all for yourself…

Geordie Greig, editor-in-chief

The one snag with William Boyd’s Cold War spy novel, Gabriel’s Moon, is that it is almost too seductive; it made me read too hungrily, too fast. Its crafted prose deserves savouring as much as its addictive pace. In Sixties London, a travel writer – aka our accidental spy hero Gabriel Drax, haunted by dreams of his mother dying in a fire – finds disturbing revelations about his family as he takes an unscheduled turn, one that leads him to assassins and perilous risks. Boyd provides him with a drôle humour and a sense of laissez-faire as Drax inadvertently becomes the most unlikely spy – not exactly giving Bond a run for his money, but as diverting and memorable as 007 (if more accident-prone). What Boyd... William Boyd has written undoubtedly reinforces him as one of Britain’s most talented and readable novelists writing today.

As Keir Starmer ponders his recent trip to Washington DC, he would be. This assured American academic, who brings fresh revelations and insights galore to her zingy rollercoaster of a chronicle, shows how Churchill’s colleagues and friends helped push our foreign policy in Britain’s favour during the Second World War. Her masterful piece of reportage demonstrates that, as is so often the case, it is as much who you know as what you know that can truly be advantageous – something, we learn, that Churchill proved in spades. Earning lucrative speaking fees to support his lavish lifestyle, Churchill became the ultimate networker irrepressible at singing for his supper. An indefatigable reporter herself, Stelzer has gathered contemporary local newspaper reports of Churchill’s lecture tours in many American cities, as well as interactions with leaders of local American communities – what he said in public, what he said at private meetings, how he comported himself. It is comprehensive and compelling.