I’m so pleased Rosemary Kaye found the time in her busy schedule to put together her list of Favorite Books Read in 2025. I’m sure the list is a little different from some of ours, since she’s reading what is available in Scotland. Thank you, Rosemary.

---

Looking back at my Goodreads list, I feel 2025 was not a great reading year for me. Although I read quite a bit of fiction, only three fiction books have been truly memorable, though I’ve enjoyed some great non-fiction reads.

So here are the books I’ve loved, all eleven of them, in reverse order of merit

11. The King’s Witches by Kate Foster

The persecution of ‘witches’ in 16^th century Scotland – and across Europe – is well documented, but Kate Foster approaches this terrifying time from a new and largely unexplored angle, that of the women. Princess Anna of Denmark makes a perilous sea voyage to marry King James and seal the political union between the two countries. She’s just 17 years old (in real life she was 14) but she’s determined to do the right thing (and avoid being banished to a convent) – she will have to endure a one year trial period before the marriage can take place, and throughout that time she must avoid James finding out how many women have already been put to death in her home country, for James is infected with the paranoia sweeping the country, and believes everything he hears about so-called ‘witches.’

Anna is accompanied by her maid, Kirsten. Kirsten has her own reasons for returning to Scotland; she has seen witch hunts spreading across Europe; she needs to reach someone in Edinburgh before it’s too late.

Meanwhile Jura, a poor girl in North Berwick who’s just lost her mother, a well-known ‘wise woman’, goes to work as a servant in the home of a local baillie. She soon finds out why so many girls have already left the job, and when she resists those other girls’ fate, it doesn’t take long for accusations of sorcery to fly in her direction.

Foster expertly interweaves these women’s stories, and shows us just how relevant they are to current events, and to the paranoia and persecution now infecting both the UK and the USA. It’s a gripping book with vividly drawn characters and a clever, shocking plot that shows all too well how superstition, political manipulation, prejudice and the need to find someone ‘different’ to blame can rapidly ruin lives and create an atmosphere of fear and mistrust.

10. Bachelor Brothers’ Bed & Breakfast Pillow Book by Bill Richardson

I read Bill Richardson’s first book, BACHELOR BROTHERS’ BED & BREAKFAST, many years ago and loved it, so I don’t know why it took me so long to read the sequel.  To be honest it’s not that much different from the original, but that’s just fine with me. I loved revisiting twins Hector and Virgil, their house on an idyllic island in Vancouver Bay, their quirky friends, neighbours and guests, and the largely peaceful lives they lead – although Richardson does occasionally throw in a surprise or two, just to keep us on our toes. Lovely comfort reading, in the same vein as Stuart McLean’s wonderful VINYL CAFÉ books. Canadian authors seem especially good at this kind of thing and I’m very glad about that.

9.   Slightly Foxed 83

I always enjoy the quarterly editions of SLIGHTLY FOXED, with their eclectic collections of writing from both famous and unknown contributors. No 83 contained a particularly enjoyable selection. I especially loved Raffaella Barker’s memoir of her mother Elspeth, the author of one of my favourite ever novels, O CALEDONIA; what a wonderful childhood her five children had with this eccentric, brilliant woman. Rafaella recalls ‘the conversation I had been having with her all my life’ and wishes she could still ask Elspeth questions ranging from ‘what was it like to move to rural Norfolk when you were 23, and having 5 young children?’ to ‘What do you think of Emily Wilson’s ILIAD?’

Other outstanding contributors to this volume include Jane Ridley, writing on ‘the scandal of Crawfie (the late Queen and Princess Margaret’s nanny) and the book she wrote,  THE LITTLE PRINCESSES, Becky Tipper on Mary Norton, author of THE BORROWERS, and the different way in which we see characters in children’s books when we re-read them to our own children, and Michael Barber on Christopher Isherwood and MR NORRIS CHANGES TRAINS.

My subscription to Slightly Foxed sometimes feels like a bit of an indulgence; then the next edition lands on the mat and all doubts disperse. It may be a luxury, but I easily persuade myself it’s an essential one.

8.   A Life with Food by Peter Langan

I wrote about this memoir on a fairly recent Thursday, so I won’t go into great detail here; Peter Langan, restaurateur and art collector, was one of the wild men of 1960s’ Soho, much in the same club as Oliver Reed and Michael Caine (only Caine survives); here he set out to write his memoir, but only got the first few chapters down before he died in a fire at his home. His great friend the art critic Brian Sewell finished the book by annotating the chapter outlines and notes that Langan left behind. A Life with Food captures a moment in time, a time when imaginative, highly unreliable, heavy-drinking, volatile chancers like this could own Soho. I’m sure Langan was truly awful to live with, and indeed to work with, but no-one can say he wasn’t colourful.

7.  Jokes, Jokes, Jokes: My Very Funny Memoir by Jenny Éclair

Jenny Éclair is an English comedian, now in her 60s. This book touched so many chords for me, even though, as a child, I was scared and shy whilst she was, from the start, a rebel, an attention-seeker and a full-on drama queen. In this brilliant memoir Jenny is brutally honest about the numerous things she’s messed up, and the challenges that did – and still do – face women in comedy today. She’s very, very funny, very human and totally relatable, and despite her self-confessed unreliability and lack of mothering skills, her love for her very long-suffering husband and her beautiful, talented daughter Phoebe shines through.

This year Jenny toured on the back of this book, and my friend Heather and I loved her show here in Aberdeen – as, judging by the hoots of laughter and enthusiastic applause, did every woman in the audience.

6.   The Stepford Wives by Ira Levin

I remember my mother talking about this book when it was first published in, I think, the early 1970s, and the film that followed – but for some reason I only got to it this year. It didn’t seem dated to me – it’s the terrifying story of Joanna, who moves with her family to the perfect community of Stepford. Except it isn’t perfect.  In an era in which second wave feminism was developing fast, the women of Stepford are curiously returning to the 1950s model.  Joanna eventually realises what is happening and tries to resist, and the novel becomes a page-turning thriller as we can only observe her desperate struggle to escape.

As with Kate Foster’s The King’s Witches, The Stepford Wives is even more relevant today than it was 50+ years ago. Politicians want women back in the kitchen; the trad wife movement is becoming horrifyingly popular. As in every other aspect of modern life, we are all being pressurised to comply; difference is dangerous to people who want absolute power. 

Brilliant novel.

5.   Playing to the Gallery by Grayson Perry

In this straightforward little book Perry – one of the most famous artists working in the UK today – demystifies the art world and its commodification by galleries and dealers. He discusses our ideas of beauty and how they are formed, and tests the boundaries of art – what art is, and what is really just a poor excuse for art. He strips back the ‘international English of art’ and shows it to be nothing but a pseudish language used to make a piece appear more complex than it is and allow the speaker to claim cultural superiority.  Perry includes his own very apposite and funny pen and ink illustrations – one on the ‘hipster and handbag test’ is especially hilarious.

But in the end Grayson explains to us why his practice remains so important to him,‘a refuge, a place inside my head where I can go on my own and process the world and its complexities. It’s an inner shed in which I can lose myself.’

I am not well informed about art, anything I do know I’ve learned from my youngest daughter and from being involved in the local art scene.  Playing to the Gallery is a simple, easy to read, highly entertaining guide, and one I enjoyed very much.

4.   Comfort Eating: What We Eat When No-One is Looking by Grace Dent

Grace is the Guardian’s food critic, and she’s never scared of taking a pretentious (or just plain bad) restaurant down a peg or two. She also hosts the Guardian’s Comfort Eating podcast, in which she invites well known people to bring along a plate of their favourite, unfussy, snack – no smart food or difficult cooking (in fact preferably no cooking) allowed.‘

‘None must involve a special visit to a twice-weekly farmers’ market…the main ingredients must be carbohydrate and fat.’

After they’ve shared their dish, she takes them back through their childhood and earlier life with reference to the food they ate in the family home, and what they eat now.

In this eminently readable book, Grace interweaves some of the best of the podcast interviews with chapters on the story of her own life. She talks about her working class childhood in Carlisle (NW England), and her food memories of Angel Delight (a staple of my own childhood) and Smash instant mash (ditto), her life in London working for the Guardian, and her temporary return to the house where she was born, to be with her mother when the latter is dying. She has always retained a marvellously down-to-earth approach, and her restaurant reviews are frequently hilarious. 

3.   On Writing by Stephen King

I’ve read a lot of books about creative writing, and I have even more sitting on my shelves while I wait to absorb their advice by some kind of magical osmosis. On Writing is short and to the point. It doesn’t set homework. It doesn’t break stories down into 95 different elements. King comes straight to it; a successful novel must have a story, and that story must be good – good enough to keep the reader’s attention better than all the others. You need to cut the waffle, get on and write it.

When you think about it this makes so much sense.

King also writes about his own career, from his awful childhood, the financial struggles he, his wife and young family had at the beginning and the many low paid jobs he had to take to keep everyone fed and clothed, to his later success, and the terrible car accident that almost killed him and from which he needed a long and painful convalescence.

On Writing is definitely the best (and shortest) manual I’ve read, and combining it with the author’s own life story makes it even more interesting and memorable.

2.   Chewing the Fat: Tasting Notes from a Greedy Life by Jay Rayner

I seem to have chosen quite a few food-related books this year, and this was one I particularly enjoyed, though I didn’t expect to.

Jay Rayner was The Observer’s restaurant critic for many years; he also hosted the Radio 4 programme The Kitchen Cabinet. This book is a collection of columns he wrote for the newspaper; they’re short (700 words), succinct, funny and as no-nonsense, in Rayner’s own way, as Grace Dent’s.

He’s also the son of Claire Rayner, one of the first media agony aunts and a very well known broadcaster in the 70s-80s. The family is Jewish (non-observant) and Rayner writes interestingly about his mother’s need to feed all comers.

I love his honesty about enjoying things like toast burnt black, carbonised (not caramelised) onions, and bacon on practically every dish (despite being Jewish…)

I found myself agreeing with so much that he said; he can’t bear pretentious, over-garnished food, he loathes breakfast in bed, ‘tasting menus’, buffets (‘where ingredients go to die’), American brunches, train food, mystifying logos on lavatory doors, people paying silly money for food (especially Russian oligarchs, who at the time he wrote this one were omnipresent in smart London restaurants), rushed dinner bookings with time limited tables, afternoon teas (‘facing up to the reality of a long, unstructured evening because dinner is now out of the question’ – YES! My thoughts exactly), and most of all Christmas – his ‘Christmas commandments’ are hilarious – ‘Thou shalt not mistake Nigella (Lawson), Jamie (Oliver) and Mary (Berry) [all famous TV cooks] for the Lord Thy God’, ‘The only good thing about Christmas lunch is that it allows the cook to hide from the relatives.’

He describes himself as a man who ‘has rarely met a calorie he couldn’t hug’.

I’m sure Rayner would not be everyone’s cup of tea, but I loved this little book, which I picked up for £1 in a charity shop.

1. My Name is Why by Lemn Sissay

Lemn Sissay was the child of a young Ethiopian woman who came to the UK to attend Bible college.  Although she was unmarried, Lemn’s mother was determined to keep him and refused to sign the adoption papers presented to her by the social services.

She then learned that her father was dying in Addis Ababa, so returned home on a temporary basis to help care for him. She put Lemn in the short-term care of the local authority, which then informed her that she was deemed to have ‘abandoned’ her child.

Lemn was placed into foster care with an evangelical white Baptist couple, who changed his name to Mark. They then went on to have 3 children of their own. At the age of 12 his volatile and troubled foster mother refused to keep him, largely because he no longer accepted the extremes of her religious faith. She sent him to a children’s home and told him no member of her family would ever contact him again; he was cut off from the only family he had ever known, and with whom he had had a fairly happy childhood. 

From that day on he was shunted around various institutions – places which then, as now, are notoriously poor carers of lost and damaged young people. Lemn’s behaviour and mental health deteriorated and he ended up in what used to be called borstal, a prison-like home where boys were physically and sexually abused.

Lemn had one person on his side; his long-term social worker Norman Miller consistently tried to help him. At the age of 18, Lemn was housed in a council flat and put in touch with various support groups in Manchester that helped him turn his life around and encouraged him to write poetry. At 21 he finally managed to trace his birth mother – she had also been trying to find him for years. She had not wanted him to stay in the UK with a white family and face discrimination. She was by then working for the United Nations.

Lemn is now 58 years old, a highly acclaimed poet, author and speaker. He was the official poet for the 2012 Olympics and until 2022 Chancellor of Manchester University. His work has featured at the Royal Academy and the British Film Institute. Last year in Aberdeen I heard him speak about his life and perform some of his fabulous poetry.  It was a wonderful evening, full of self-deprecating humour, laughter and some very poignant moments. Lemn says,

‘How a society treats those children who have no one to look after them is a measure of how civilised it is.’

Lemn is a real champion of children’s rights – especially those children stuck in our dreadful, and dreadfully underfunded, care system.  His poems are clever, funny and perceptive. My Name is Why is a very short book, but it tells the story of a man who, against all the odds, persevered and went on to inspire others.

My Name is Why is a shocking, heartbreaking book which really makes you think about the way we treat these children, some of the most vulnerable people in our so-called civilised society. It is my book of the year.