Meanwhile it’s been a bumper year at CapX for insights from the authors of compelling new books. If you’re looking for thought-provoking political reading over the holiday, you can start with Madsen Pirie on the meaning of Conservatism, David Laws on the history of Liberal-Labour relations and Musa al-Gharbi on the not-so-woke elite world of ‘symbolic capitalists’. Or if you’re looking for economic inspiration, try Daniel Waldenström on what Thomas Piketty got wrong, Jon Moynihan on how to get Britain back to growth – or this fascinating extract from ‘Boom’, published by Stripe Press, about how an investment bubble fuelled the fracking revolution.

With a new baby at home, I haven’t had much leisure time for reading this year, apart from occasional forays for inspiration and escape to the visionary science fiction of Iain M Banks, whose Culture series is still the best upbeat account of the far future of human possibility. (Elon Musk famously agrees, having named his fleet of SpaceX drone ships in homage to Banks’ series.) I’m also enjoying Jason Crawford’s ‘Techno-Humanist Manifesto’, which is being published chapter by chapter online and offers a more philosophical take on the progress theme.

Joseph Dinnage
It’s been a year for great books. When it comes to politics, there’s one that has dominated the agenda: Boris Johnson’s memoir ‘Unleashed’. Love him or loathe him (very few find themselves in between), he writes a hell of a book. From the campaign trail in the build up to the 2008 London mayoral election to the Herculean task of ‘getting Brexit done’, it’s a treasure trove of political insights. As with much of what the former Prime Minister has to say, however, read with a pinch of salt.

On the fiction front, the best novel I read was JM Coetzee’s ‘Disgrace’ – a touching, at times harrowing account of post-apartheid South Africa in the 1990s. Professor David Lurie – the protagonist – is a complex character. After a string of risky sexual encounters with his students – perhaps inspired by his love of Lord Byron – he is pushed out of his university, after which he moves to a farm with his daughter. What follows is a brutal portrayal of a country in violent flux. 

On a trip to America earlier this year, I picked up ‘Right Reason’, a collection of articles by William F Buckley Jr from a bookshop in Pittsburgh. Working my way through that has been a pleasure. With supreme transatlantic arrogance, the fluidity of Buckley’s writing on everything from Reaganomics to peanut butter both irritates and delights. Never shy of controversy, he truly was one of the sharpest thinkers of the last century.

David Goodhart
I caught up with Robert Harris’s 2022 historical thriller ‘Act of Oblivion’ about the hunting down of two of the regicides – Edward Whalley and William Goffe – who had signed the death warrant of Charles I. Like many of the best Harris novels you learn a lot of history. In this case I discovered just how little I knew about the English civil war, while also enjoying a fast moving page-turner.

I am not the biggest fan of Rory Stewart, the Left’s favourite Tory, but he has done public life a service with his excoriating memoir ‘Politics on the Edge’. His account of an able and ambitious MP struggling with the ignorance, bureaucratic inertia and blind partisanship of Westminster life is often horrifying but it is full of wisdom and written with a humility not usually associated with his brief political career.

I listened to Geoff Norcott reading his memoir ‘Where Did I Go Right: How the Left Lost Me’ about his journey from working class south London, the son of a trade union official, to becoming the one mainstream comedian with conservative views. It is, of course, funny but also moving and his painful observations about class should win the book a place on every sociology degree reading list.

Bruce Anderson
Simon Mayall is a retired general and a former senior government adviser on the Middle East. He is also a historian of great prowess and fine prose. His first book, ‘Soldier in the Sand’, established him as a front-rank commentator. His latest, ‘The House of War’ has confirmed his reputation. Dealing with the 1,300-year-long struggle between Christendom and the Caliphate, there is an inexorable conclusion. That conflict is not over yet. Sir Simon’s book is a first-class read.

More Simony: another knight of the realm has also produced an excellent book. Simon Jenkins’s ‘Short History of British Architecture’ is another excellent read. He is particularly good when ripping into the so-called architects, disciples of Corbusier, who have inflicted so much ugliness while creating so many social problems.

The Mayall book will make you thoughtful: the Jenkins one inspires anger. Both will anchor you to your armchair, evading seasonal duties.

Sam Bidwell
Starting the list with an evergreen re-read, Lee Kuan Yew’s ‘From Third World To First’ is indispensable for any young radical on the British Right. It’s an inspiring account of what we can achieve with sufficient will, ambition, and ability – much-needed in the current political climate.

‘The Origins of English Individualism’ by Alan MacFarlane is another must-read, providing an anthropological account of England’s peculiar political, social, and economic customs. Given the success of our ideas and norms over the past few centuries, it can be easy to forget what makes us unique – whether that’s our unusual family structure, our merchant spirit, or our peculiar constitutional model.

Finally, John Hoskyns’ ‘Just In Time’ has seen something of a revival in British conservative circles recently, thanks largely to the proselytisation efforts of Mr James Price. It’s a forensic account of how the Thatcher Revolution of the 1980s was actually born – warts and all. Then as now, the need to rewire the British state was a daunting challenge, but the forensic work of Hoskyns and others made it possible to bring about the change that Britain sorely needed. Food for thought.

More prosaically, Sam Freedman’s ‘Failed State: Why Nothing Works and How We Fix’ It explained why governments now find it so difficult to carry out their stated policies, and set out the serious and repeated mistakes made within Whitehall. It is not a hopeless cause but there is a lot of rebuilding and reform ahead.

Sally Rooney’s fourth novel ‘Intermezzo’ was fiction’s event of the year and it dazzled: a rich, profound, complex meditation on human relationships and the bonds of love and affection. Her adoption of a Joycean stream of consciousness for one leading character unfolded a swooping and breathless narrative of acute sympathy and insight, and her portrayal of the blank spaces, the words left unsaid, between men and women remains sometimes unbearably poignant. Rooney remains a rare and brilliant writer.

Tom Jones
Last year, ‘with the rise of medically assisted suicide’, I chose Evelyn Waugh’s ‘Love Among the Ruins’, a dystopian short story written at the outset of the welfare state where euthanasia is the most in-demand government service. If you didn’t read it then, you should read it now.

Suddenly, everyone in politics seems to be talking about the Blob; I’ve therefore been recommending Peter Mair’s ‘Ruling the Void’ liberally. Mair argues the decline in party politics has severed the link between ruled and rulers, meaning elites increasingly distance themselves from the public and redefine democracy to downplay the importance of popular sovereignty. In this void, ‘experts’ – allegedly impartial technocratic specialists – step in, operating within ostensibly accountable state or semi-state institutions. This deliberately creates a ‘protected sphere in which policy-making can evade the constraints imposed by representative democracy’. 14 years of Tories handing money and power to their political opponents suddenly made a little more sense after I’d read this.

Finally, Keir’s war on farmers through the detestable IHT increases made me re-read James Rebanks’ ‘English Pastoral’. The story of three generations of Rebanks maintaining their rugged upland sheep farm reminded me just how much the countryside I love up here in North Yorkshire relies on their careful, patient stewardship – and how quickly that might be lost.

Maxwell Marlow
There’s nothing more festive than the colours red and green, so in that spirit, ‘Public Net Worth: Accounting, Government, Democracy’ sits at the top of my recommendations for all wonkish elves. This book outlines the ability to manage capital, consider the real value of assets on the books, and using even the most simple financial details seems beyond government – this book sets out why, and how to fix it. It may be as dry as Christmas sherry, but it’s a fascinating read.

For those wanting a bit more oomph and pizzazz, Boris Johnson’s ‘Unleashed’ is an excellent read. Although maybe ‘Throne of Glass’ may have been a more apt title… Much like his governing style, it bounces from topic to topic with bluster and brilliant segues. His writing style is as impressive as his oratorical style – similes and metaphors abound, with fascinating insights into his long and varied career. It does really live up to the hype.

For centre-right gamers this Christmas, I recommend diving into ‘Helldivers 2’, an award-winning indie co-op shooter from Arrowhead Games. Playing with your fellow wonks as you spread managed democracy, freedom, and liberty against the enemies of mankind. It’s an absorbing, fast-paced, and high intensity game, which I recommend fully.

Andrew Tettenborn
For fiction a return to the nineteenth century. Sir Walter Scott is much pooh-poohed, which is a pity. His best novel, ‘Guy Mannering’, read again after a long interval, is as good as any from the period: not only do you see the original Dandie Dinmont, but you see a vanished Scotland of robust decency and common sense that would turn the minds of those now administering that benighted nation.

Serious if concerning politics came this year from ‘The War on the Past’, Frank Furedi’s excellently-written polemic against neophiliacs who set our culture at nought and seek to erase it. A good journalistic read was last year’s ‘Dead in the Water’, some vivid lid-lifting by a couple of American journalists of maritime skullduggery arising from the murky world of scuttling, insurance fraud and international crime. Very entertaining if at times over-sensational.

Philip Patrick
A change of job and a significantly extended commute, on Japanese trains that are almost designed for reading, allowed me to tackle a few lengthy tomes this year, none more impressive than the first two volumes of Professor Stephen Kotkin’s surely definite biography of Stalin. Kotkin rejects the lazy stereotype of Stalin as a psychopathic opportunist, or opportunistic psychopath, and argues that the Soviet leader was all too sane, and that everything he did, however grotesquely, counter-productively cruel it seemed, had a Marxist-Leninist rationale. The true evil of the Soviet Union s the ideology itself. 1000 pages, but there’s a jolting modern parallel on almost every page.

Talking of ideologically driven oppression, Graham Linehan’s autobiographic ‘Tough Crowd’ briskly outlines his descent from the nation’s top comedy writer to a virtual outcast, turned on by his craven ‘fellow’ comedians and virtually unemployable, all for the modern-day heresy of arguing in favour of biological sex and in defence of spaces for biological women. It is testament to Linehan’s talent that he can relate his shameful treatment and still make you laugh out loud.

If I can squeeze in one more, Miranda Devine’s meticulous detailing of the Hunter Biden laptop scandal ‘Laptop from Hell’, a tale of good old-fashioned greed, sleaze and corruption, is a reminder of what real, as opposed to regime, journalism looks like.

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