Introduction

Like others who answered this request about the top 10 books, mine is subjective, limited, and would probably be different last month or next month.

The 10 books I list here are those which I have read and have really made a difference to me. Either because they made me think, re-think, and consider what I believe, or because they transported me into a different world, or just that I really enjoyed them.

It's not a particularly literary list either; one is even a children's book, and two are non-fiction. But they are books I really value, as opposed to books I feel I ought to boast about having read.

They are in no particular order - just books I love and would like to share with you.

Swallows and Amazons

1. Swallows and Amazons, written and published in 1930, is about a group of children camping and sailing in the Lake District, in north-west England.

I first read it when I was 7, and it inspired in me a love of walking, sailing and camping that has added immensely to my life. S & A is the first in a series, set mostly in the Lake District and in East Anglia, and all focus on life outdoors. Although written for children, I still enjoy them today.

The books invoke the power of childhood's imagination. Two of the twelve books are the stories told by the group, about imagined adventures in China and the West Indies.

The twelve books are:

Swallows and Amazons (published 1930) set in the Lake District

Swallowdale (pub. 1931) set in the Lake District

Peter Duck (pub. 1932) one of the imagined books, set in the West Indies

Winter Holiday (pub. 1933) set in the Lake District

Coot Club (pub. 1934) set in the Norfolk Broads

Pigeon Post (pub. 1936) set in the Lake District

We Didn't Mean to Go to Sea (pub. 1937) set in Suffolk

Secret Water (pub. 1939) set in East Anglia

The Big Six (pub. 1940) set in the Norfolk Broads

Missie Lee (pub. 1941) the second imaginary book, set in China

The Picts and the Martyrs (pub. 1943) set in the Lake District

Great Northern? (pub. 1947) set in the islands west of Scotland

A Vindication of the Rights of Woman

2. A Vindication of the Rights of Woman: with Strictures on Political and Moral Subjects was written in 1792 by Mary Wollstonecraft. It is an early work of feminist philosophy. Wollstonecraft addresses herself to the arguments made at the time that women ought to be denied education.

Wollstonecraft was writing partly in reply to Rights of Women by Charles de Talleyrand-Perigord. In this, the writer stated that women should only receive a domestic education.

Wollstonecraft states in her Vindication that women ought to receive a proper education. She argues that women are essential to the life of a nation because they educate the children, and they could be companions for their husbands, not merely spouses. She bases this view on the argument that women are human beings deserving of the same fundamental rights as men.

It is a short book, perhaps more of a long essay than a text-book. It is short, but absolutely fundamental to feminist and equality ideas that have developed since she was writing at the end of the 18^th century.

One of the most important arguments she made is that women need to be educated rationally in order to become a fundamental part of society and to be able to take their place as fully recognised adult members of civilisation.

She stated that:

Women are taught from their infancy that beauty is a woman’s sector, the mind shapes itself to the body, and roaming around its gilt cage, only seeks to adorn its prison.

Wollstonecraft did not argue in the Vindication for gender equality in the same sense that we would understand it in the 20^th or 21^st century. But it was a major contribution to the developing philosophy that women are not second class citizens. She thought it important, for example, that men and women are equal in the eyes God and subject to a moral law which applies to both genders. This might seem obvious to us reading now, but was far from obvious at the time she was writing.

She also thought that men and women should be subject to the same moral laws in relation to the sanctity of marriage, or of monogamy, as women.

This book, is, I believe fundamental even now in the 21^st century. It shows the developing ideas of equality, and life for women and men living together and contributing to society equally.

Her personal life was equally unusual in terms of the late 18^th century. Her first child was born illegitimately, and she pretended for some time to be married, a deception that was revealed when she actually married just before her death. Her second child, Mary Shelley, is best known for writing Frankenstein.

In the introduction, for example, she wrote:

But, if women are to be excluded, without having a voice, from a participation in the natural rights of mankind, prove first, to ward off the charge of injustice and inconsistency, that they want a reason – else this flaw in your new constitution will ever show that man must, in some shape, act like a tyrant, and tyranny, in whatever part of society it rears its brazen front, will ever undermine morality.

Glittering Images

3. The book Glittering Images is the first in a series of six books set in the fictional town and diocese of Starbridge in southern England. Starbridge seems very much based on the real cathedral town of Salisbury. The books were written by a British woman who lived for some time in the United States of America, called Susan Howatch. The Starbridge series, as the 6 books are known, are self-contained books, each narrated in the first person by a different protagonist, but many of the narrators appear in the other books and the events are interlinked.

Glittering Images is about and told by the Reverend Dr Charles Ashworth. He is a man in his late thirties, and a widower, who works in Cambridge, as an academic in a college there. He is sent to investigate the household of the Bishop of Starbridge, by the Archbishop of Canterbury, who suspects that there is an unfortunate domestic situation which needs to be considered and, if necessary, contained. This book is set just before the beginning of the Second World War, in 1937, and shows the luxury and almost decadence of Episcopal life at that time.

Charles Ashworth falls in love with the Bishop’s companion, but has to unravel and is perplexed by the complex domestic relationships between the Bishop, his wife, and the companion.

He seeks advice from Father Jonathan Darrow, who is Abbot of the (fictional) Grantchester Abbey, an Anglican Order of Benedictine monks.

This series as a whole is absolutely fascinating. It explores many aspects of religious life and theology, but is also fascinating fiction. The books open my eyes to many aspects of Anglican theology of which I was unaware, but they are also a really enjoyable read. I can heartily recommend these to anybody.

The series ends in the late 1960s, and the last book is also narrated by (an elderly) Charles Ashworth, after his wife’s death. 

The Chrysalids

4. The book The Chrysalids is by John Wyndham, and was first published in 1955. It is, in my opinion, the best of John Wyndham’s excellent novels.

The book is set at an unknown time in the future, in rural Labrador. It is clear that an advanced civilisation existed long ago, known as the ‘old people’, which was destroyed when God sent “tribulation” to the world to punish sins. It’s fairly clear that the tribulation was in fact a nuclear war or series of nuclear explosions, because there are references in the novel to what appear to be radiation effects and radiation sickness and to nuclear impact sites. This is never stated for certain in the book.

The only books from before the rebuilding of civilisation which have survived are the Bible, and a book written during the chaos after tribulation which is called Repentances.

The new society is, as far as people know, mostly confined to Labrador. Areas of the country are divided into the safe lands and the fringes, which are inhabited by plants and animals and humans which have mutated from what is seen as the right form.

The book is mostly set in a rural settlement, a frontier or pioneering community, called Waknuk. The main protagonist is David Strorm, who is the son of the village or area’s most religious and zealous man.

David and other young children in the area begin to discover that they can communicate by a form of telepathy. They become aware, however, that this is a mutation which their society will not allow. Every plant, animal and human has a definition of the approved form. Those specimens of humanity or flora or fauna who do not conform to the set standard are the work of the devil. Animals with mutations are killed, plants are burnt, and humans are sterilised and banished to the fringes.

The story is about how the children with this telepathic mutation developed through adolescence, form a community, and eventually are forced to flee the area when their ability is discovered.

It is a fascinating book about what it is to be human, and how humanity can be defined.

Dissolution

6. Dissolution is a thoughtful and detailed book set in the reformation in England during the mid 16^th century. The main character is called Matthew Shardlake, and is a lawyer in London, and closely associated with Thomas Cromwell’s reformation party (the protestant movement).

The book takes place in 1537, just after the declaration of Henry VIII as Supreme Head of the Church, and the rejection of some Catholic practices. Matthew Shardlake is sent to a fictional monastery called Scarnsea to investigate the murder of a previous commissioner sent there, and also to try to find out facts harmful to the monastery. Cromwell hopes that he can thereby put pressure on the monastery to surrender voluntarily. The “dissolution” of the title refers to the dissolution of the monasteries.

This is the first of currently four books in the Matthew Shardlake series, and they are all fascinating. The atmosphere of terror, change, and bewilderment as the religious certainties of centuries faded away to be replaced by rapid and bewildering changes is unparalleled. I can heartily recommend both this book and the ones which follow it. 

Animal Farm

5. Animal Farm is a well-known and fairly short book by George Orwell. It was a book I read when I was fairly young, in my early teens, and it had a very great impact on me. It led me to examine and explore ideas of tyranny, democracy, and totalitarianism.

The book was published in 1945, and is set on a farm. In effect, there is a revolution, where the human owners of the farm are thrown out, and it is set up as a society in which all the animals are equal. Over the book, the society changes, and a new ruling class emerges. The phrase, “all animals are equal” soon becomes, “all animals are equal, but some animals are more equal than others”.

By the end of the book, the pigs who rule the farm, control it, and exercise power over the other animals are not distinguishable from the humans who visit the neighbouring farm. The animals who have striven to take part in the equal farm, are exploited and treated badly. For example, Boxer, is a strong animal on the farm. He is a horse who is particularly hard working, and loyal, although not particularly bright. Although he works very hard during most of the book, towards the end he is injured, and without a care is sent off to be killed. The other animals are told that he has died peacefully in hospital.

A Plague on Both Your Houses

7. Susanna Gregory has written a series of books set in the College of Michaelhouse in Cambridge. The first book, A Plague on Both Your Houses, is set during the first appearance of the Black Death in England in 1349.

The main hero of the books is Matthew Bartholomew, a fellow and also a doctor, who teaches medicine at Michaelhouse College, and acts as a doctor within the town.

The whole series is absolutely fascinating. It really evokes the 14^th century, with the dirt, cold, and misery. It also makes you realise for the first time, perhaps, just how deeply embedded in every day life religion was.

Many of the characters are in holy orders of some kind, many are monks, and church services several times a day are the normal form of life. The day is marked by the religious offices - the different services which take place throughout the day, and the year is marked with saints' days and Lent, Advent, and other festivals.

This is an absolutely wonderful series which evokes the Middle Ages in an impressive way.

City of Djinns

8. City of Djinns is a book written by William Dalrymple in the mid 1990’s. It is a non-fiction description of him and his wife living in Delhi, in India for a year. He discusses places he had visited in Delhi, people he meets, and the general atmosphere and culture.

It is an astonishing book. Dalrymple has an amazing ability to conjure up in words a place utterly foreign to the reader, and to make the reader feel that he is in fact there or has seen some of the things which the author relates.

I read this book on my first trip to India, and it helped me fall in love with the dirty, noisy but absolutely fascinating city of Delhi.

Heart of Darkness

 9. Heart of Darkness is a short book by Joseph Conrad. Marlow is sent to travel far into the African interior to rescue a man called Kurtz. When he eventually finds Kurtz, he discovers a dying man, and attempts to take him back downriver to the port.

On the journey back, Marlow discovers the extent to which Kurtz, an amoral and controlling man, has taken over in the African interior.

This is a fascinating book, about the depths of the human mind and soul.

Anna Karenina

10. Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoy is an amazing novel. It is set in the upper reaches of the Tzarist Russian aristocracy, and open with the oft-quoted sentence, Happy families are all alike; every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way.

A fascinating tale of hypocrisy, religion, insincerity, friendship and love, no life is the same after this book enters it.