Non fiction ideas

Sorry, meant I preferred This Game of Ghosts over Touching The Void.

Into thin air also a good read!

Any of Joe Simpsons books are great. I actually preferred This Game of Ghosts to Into Thin Air.

A book called The Last Englishman about hiking the PCT is very good.

I hear that Chris Peckhams new book Fingers In The Sparklejar is very good but not read it myself yet.

There's one called The Weaker Vessel which is about what it was like being a woman in 17th century England. Really enjoyed that one.

Oh, and Peter Frankopan's The Silk Road.

The Emperor of Maladies which is "a biography of cancer" I.e. how it has been treated throughout history and how it was researched and how chemo etc was developed. Henrietta Lacks is a big part of it too.

Once In A House On Fire by Andrea Ashworth and All Of These People by Fergal Keane are nonfiction reads I've really enjoyed (despite my claims not to like nonfiction!)

Into Thin Air by John Krakaur. I've spelt his surname wrong but you'll find it. Actually anything by him - he did a very interesting one about Mormons.

The Bounty by Caroline Alexander

By Permission of Heaven about the great fire of London (really interesting)

City of Laughter about scandalously satirical pamphlets in the time of the Prince Regent. Full of juiciness.

Into The Wild byJon Krakauer and Wild by Cheryl Strayed are both unputdownable.

Touching the Void is also a fascinating read.

I have recently got into modern war literature and a non-fiction book in that line recommended by my history teacher colleague is My War Gone By, I Miss It So by Antony Loyd about the Bosnia conflict. I have also just read The Things They Carried by Tim O'Brien which is a fictionalised account of his experience in the Vietnam War.

I would highly recommend the two by Frank Gardner, Blood And Sand & Far Horizons.

He's the BBC Security correspondent who was near-fatally shot in Rhiyad in 2004, resulting in him being made a paraglegic and in a wheel chair.

Blood And Sand tells of his early life as a student, his love of travel, then his early working life as an investment banker before becoming a journalist. The book follows him through the various stages in his life and the places he travelled to for both work and pleasure, culminating in the shooting and his subsequent rehab.

Far Horizons is divided into 26 chapters, each one again about a place Gardner visited, spanning his student years and then how he was able to take up his love of travelling again even after his shooting, basically showing the world what you can accomplish when everything seems stacked against you.

Each book gives the reader a real insight into the far flung places of the world, and after reading them both I feel totally enriched and enlightened. Also, Gardner tells of his recovery and rehab in often very personal and intimate ways, and I truly felt privileged to have been allowed to share in these particular aspects of his life.

I realise I probably sound gushing and overly sentimental in what I've said but honestly these books are absolutely essential reading. You won't feel the same afterwards I can assure you.

The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks

Fragile Loves by Stephen Westaby. Similar to the Henry Marsh but heart rather than brain surgery.

I recently enjoyed "lion" by saroo brierley

About an Indian street boy who was adopted by an Australian couple tracing his birth family in India.