Books of the Year 2024

It’s that time of year when I reveal my favourite books of the year and hopefully give a bit of help to late present buyers. Last year I did a special on my top British politics books of all time. Previous years are here: 2022, 2021, 2020, 2019.

Before getting into this year’s list it would be remiss not to give a small plug to my own book “Failed State: Why Nothing Works and How We Fix It” which came out in July and was well reviewed in the Times, Guardian, Economist, FT, TLS and, somewhat surprisingly, the Morning Star. It also made “book of the year” lists in the Economist, FT and Telegraph.

And while we’re on plugs a reminder that you can buy gift subscriptions to this substack for the politico in your life who has everything. You can time them to arrive on Christmas morning (or at any other time).

This year’s top ten is pretty history heavy – it’s been a very non-fiction sort of year - but I’m definitely going to try and read more good fiction next year (recommendations welcome in the comments).

1. The Unaccountability Machine by Dan Davies

I read this in draft just as I was finishing my own book and deeply regretted I hadn’t had the opportunity to do so earlier. While Dan’s book is primarily focused on the failures of modern economics there is a lot of crossover with the types of governance problems I identify in politics.

The hero of the book is Stafford Beer, founder of Cybernetics, which is essentially the study of how systems use and manage information. Davies argues contemporary economic doctrine means companies tend to discard far too much information and focus all their attention on shareholder maximization. As he puts it: “Any system which is set up to maximize a single objective has the potential to go bonkers.” Private equity firms are often the worse offenders, buying up businesses with no goal other than to juice short-term profitability even at the long-term cost of the organisation, and with minimal cost to them if it goes wrong.

This monomaniacal focus leads to the development of something Davies calls “accountability sinks” – in which companies organise themselves so no one is in a position to overrule a decision, and so no one is ever responsible. This prevents interference with the system, at the cost of ever adapting to feedback. Anyone who’s tried to use the helpdesk of a large company will understand the concept. I wrote in August about how this is an increasingly useful idea in politics too. There’s a particularly vivid case study of how a series of accountability sinks led to a large number of squirrels being shredded at Amsterdam airport, that will stay with you.

It's one of the most insightful books I’ve read in a long time, and will give you a whole new vocabulary for understanding why, in the words of the subtitle, “big systems make terrible decisions”.

2. Eleanor Marx by Rachel Holmes

Eleanor was Karl’s daughter and a still largely ignored figure in British history, outside of leftist intellectuals. But this 2014 biography is a superb explanation of why she should be far better known. As the inheritor of her father’s legacy, along with Friedrich Engels, she played a critical role in the development of the British, and European, left. She started up three trade unions, leading several historic strikes, and was a founding member of several socialist parties that existed prior to the creation of Labour. She was also an early feminist, constantly seeking to force middle class supporters of suffrage to see the importance of including all women in their campaigns.

But what really makes this such a great read – one of the most gripping biographies I’ve read in ages – is her long-term romantic relationship with the utterly vile Edward Aveling. He was another early socialist, as well as a conman and cad right out of the most overwrought Victorian melodrama. Her refusal to acknowledge what everyone else could see about Aveling is the emotional mystery at the core of the book. It leads to an extraordinary conclusion, and another mystery, which I won’t spoil if you don’t know Eleanor’s story.

Holmes is an accomplished biographer (her other books include one of Sylvia Pankhurst) and she writes with pace and clarity. She is more sympathetic to Eleanor’s politics than some readers will be – though many of the beliefs that passed for socialism back then are now entirely mainstream – but that won’t stop you enjoying the story.

3. Victorious Century by David Cannadine

This is part of the most recent Penguin History of Britain series and is the best one volume history of Victorian Britain I’ve read. Cannadine is a Princeton and Oxford Professor and this is the culmination of a lifetime of study. It’s quite old-fashioned in that the focus is unashamedly on high politics rather than economic or social history, though there is enough of that to provide necessary context. There’s also a good dose of Victorian literature.

It's particularly good on the evolution of political culture as a result of the Reform Acts, seeing these as being less about a Whiggish progress towards modern democracy and more about securing the position of political parties, who were able to use a more professional approach to election campaigns to consolidate their power.

As such the Commons grew in important and the Lords and monarch were diminished. (I also read the late Angus Hawkins’ “Victorian Political Culture” this year, which is excellent on these developments too but more academic and incredibly hard to find at a reasonable price).

4. The Gun, The Ship and The Pen by Linda Colley

Colley is another of our most distinguished historians and also married to Cannadine, so I thought I’d put them next to each other.

It’s hard to describe this superb book because it covers so much ground but it’s essentially a history of constitutions, from the first written under enlightenment principles by Corsican resistance leader Pasquale Paoli, in 1755, to the modernising 1889 Meji constitution in Japan. The range of material covered is startling in its reach and erudition.

Colley’s core argument is that the rise of constitutions was driven not by democratic aspirations or revolutions but the increasing costs of military engagement, with rudimentary rights being offered in return for higher taxes and conscription. It’s also why they tended to focus on men, as they were at the heart of military endeavours. Women’s rights only became undeniable, in most countries, once they had found themselves involved in the mammoth efforts required to fight WW1. There’s a brilliant discussion of Britain’s lack of a codified constitution and why it was seen as unnecessary given an existing political settlement forged after the civil war, though Brits were central in the development of numerous other constitutions around the world.

There’s also lots of fascinating nuggets, my favourite being a discussion of how the Pitcairns, a tiny group of islands in the Pacific, ended up with the first constitution to include universal suffrage, including for women, in 1838.

5. The Blazing World by Jonathan Healey

Healey was a fellow historian in my year at college and it was obvious even then that he was the star of the group and the most likely to go on to a successful academic career. This, a history of 17^th century England, is his breakthrough book – released in 2023 to great reviews.

Histories of this period can be heavy and slow, weighed down by the gravity of the religious and political complexities of the civil war period. But “Blazing World” is extremely entertaining, racing through the century using humour and anecdotes to keep the story moving. It’s hard to forget the image of Attorney-General William Noy laughing so hard at the punishment meted out to one poor puritan writer in the 1630s that he “bled from his penis”.

When we get on to the main event of the civil war the book is even-handed in judging the main protagonists, acknowledging that both Charles and Cromwell were deeply flawed characters. It’s very good in describing the almost accidental way things drifted out of control.

In contrast to the still popular Marxist interpretation of the period Healey emphasises religion and ideology rather than class as the main driver of tensions and show how the inchoate hopes of the more radical members of Cromwell’s army were undermined by the Protector. The extraordinary flourishing of English art and letters after Cromwell’s fall is seen as less to do with the new monarch but the pent up desires held back during the puritan years. There’s no doubting who won that culture war.

6. Little Englanders by Alwyn Turner

Turner is one of my favourite popular historians and I’ve mentioned his four books covering each decade from the 1970s onwards, in previous lists.

This history of the Edwardian period is no less enjoyable for covering an earlier period. Turner’s great strength is using popular culture to illustrate wider currents in society and politics. Which means there’s a lot about music halls and the first wave of modern celebrity – from genuine stars like Marie Lloyd to sad stories of novelty acts like the “Fat Boy of Peckham” (a ten stone five year old). The producers of Britain’s Got Talent are hardly the first to make money out of the desperate.

Celebrity was an important tool for the new sensationalist newspapers flourishing during the period, with Alfred Harmsworth and his Daily Mail leading the way, and not worrying too much about the truth. If any one person symbolises the themes of the book it’s Horatio Bottomley – who managed to found a number of newspapers, including the Financial Times, embezzled millions, became a Liberal MP, was imprisoned for fraud, and, of course, ended up doing music hall before dying in poverty. Along the way he inspired Mr Toad from Wind in the Willows.

There’s space for politics too – including the arrival of the Labour Party into British politics and some deft character studies of Asquith, Churchill and Lloyd George. But most of the political analysis is filtered via culture (there’s a great section on invasion literature in the run up to the first world war). Few writers make history so fun.

7. G-Man: J. Edgar Hoover and the Making of the American Century by Beverely Gage

This is the first proper new biography of Hoover in 30 years, making use of a vast amount of new archival material that has emerged since then, and won last year’s Pulitzer prize as well as most other awards going in the States.

It’s a big (800 pages) traditional American political biography – with Hoover’s life set out chronologically without fancy gimmicks. As such it can be a little plodding in places, especially as Gage likes to drum home her points. But Hoover’s life was so extraordinary, and he was a participant in so much of the “American century” that it would be impossible to make it boring.

From the establishment of the FBI in the 1920s, to the war against gangsters like John Dillinger in the 1930s, through the second world war, red scares and Hoover’s vicious (if extremely popular) campaign against Martin Luther King, it’s all here. As is his own unconventional personal life, living with aide Clyde Tolson without ever acknowledging his sexuality (though it seems to have been widely known and accepted).

Hoover emerges as a cautious bureaucrat who learnt how to please his superiors and avoided taking unnecessary risks, at least until he was in a position of almost unassailable power. The deep roots of southern racism in his ideology are well documented as is the strange disconnect between his acceptance of right-wing individualism while also embracing the authoritarian power of the state. This latter contradiction remains unresolved on the modern right.

8. The Tyranny of Nostalgia by Russell Jones

I read this economic history of the last fifty years in the UK while researching my book and it gave me a good overview of the key arguments. It’s accessible to non-economists and avoids jargon (and charts).

I found it particularly useful in explaining the shift from the consensus policies of the 1970s into the Thatcherite world of the 1980s. This is typically mythologised as being about a shift from Keynesianism to Monetarism but, as Jones explains, incomes and price controls were not very Keynesian and Thatcher’s flirtation with Monetarism was fairly brief. She was just prepared to let unemployment rise.

It's also good on the creation of the single market (a Thatcher triumph) and the positive impact that had on the UK economy. Alongside several other factors, including better inflation targeting and the end of the cold war it led to the stable and growing economy that seemed the norm when I was growing up. Sadly no more.

The final sections of the book look at the damage caused by austerity, Brexit and the impoverished political and economic debates we’re left with. Endlessly pretending we can recover some imagined glory days.

9. Bankruptcy, Bubbles and Bailouts: The Inside History of the Treasury since 1976 by Aeron Davis

Another book on a similar theme, covering the same period, but much more focused on the history of the Treasury itself, including interviews with numerous Chancellors and former senior Treasury officials.

I found it extremely helpful in explaining how the Treasury has accreted so much power within Westminster and used it extensively in my own analysis. It’s not a hit job at all but a careful study of how institutional incentives drive behaviour within political systems. And how a series of crises from the IMF bailout in 1976 to Black Wednesday and the 2008 banking meltdown still drive Treasury culture. It also lays out well the ways in which these crises have been used to increase spending control over the rest of government, and how more recent Chancellors, particularly Gordon Brown and George Osborne, used this to consolidate their own political positions.

The interviews are remarkably candid, perhaps because they were granted to the author of an academic book, though it’s not written in an inaccessible style at all. A very valuable guide to the most important and powerful institution in Whitehall.

10. The Illiad, translated by Emily Wilson

I appreciate this last one is a bit more esoteric but Wilson’s translation of the Odyssey was one of my favourite books of the last decade so I’ve been really looking forward to this. She has a style of translation that somehow makes ancient poems I’ve always struggled to read into something that sounds modern without being jarring or using inappropriate language. (Her sister is the food writer Bee Wilson whose “Secret of Cooking” I also read this year in my quest to learn how to cook and is also great - so thanks to the Wilson family).

The story of the Illiad has of course been told through numerous films, novels and stories. As a modern retelling I loved Don Winslow’s gangster version “City on Fire”. But it is worth going back to the original to understand why Achilles, Hector, Cassandra and the rest have remained such powerful cultural symbols over thousands of years.

As Wilson says in the introduction:

“You already know the story. You will die. Everyone you love will also die. You will lose them forever. You will be sad and angry. You will weep. You will bargain. You will make demands. You will beg. You will pray. It will make no difference. Nothing you can do will bring them back. You know this. Your knowing changes nothing. This poem will make you understand this unfathomable truth again and again, as if for the very first time.”

When one spends ones time obsessing about the ephemeral politics of today it’s always worth being reminded of universal truths.