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Alex Carlile's Top Book Recommendations

Want to know what books Alex Carlile recommends on their reading list? We've researched interviews, social media posts, podcasts, and articles to build a comprehensive list of Alex Carlile's favorite book recommendations of all time.

1

Diaries Volume One

Prelude to Power

As Alastair Campbell said in the introduction to The Blair Years, it was always his intention to publish the full version, covering his time as spokesman and chief strategist to Tony Blair. Prelude to Power is the first of four volumes, and covers the early days of New Labour, culminating in their victory at the polls in 1997.





Volume 1 details the extraordinary tensions between Tony Blair and Gordon Brown as they resolved the question as to which one should stand to become Labour leader. It shows that right from the start, relations at the top...
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Recommended by Alex Carlile, and 1 others.

Alex CarlileThe Alastair Campbell Diaries have the quality of Pepys to this extent, which is that people will be looking for insights and finding them in 100 years’ time. (Source)

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2

The Diary of Samuel Pepys

The 1660s represent a turning point in English history, and for the main events -- the Restoration, the Dutch War, the Great Plague and the Fire of London -- Pepys provides a definitive eyewitness account. As well as recording public and historical events, Pepys paints a vivid picture of his personal life, from his socializing and amorous entanglements, to his theatre-going and his work at the Navy Board. Unequaled for its frankness, high spirits and sharp observations, the diary is both a literary masterpiece and a marvelous portrait of seventeenth-century life.

Previously...
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Peter AckroydIt is an invaluable picture of daily life in mid-17th century London and one that has never really been rivalled by any other diarist. (Source)

Alex CarlilePepys gives you a total flavour of his time. It’s a wonderful picture of London – no one else has written remotely as well about London in those days. (Source)

Alex Chase-LevensonPepys is a really great person to follow through an epidemic. He records day by day what it’s like to live in a plague-stricken city, and shows us the intertwining of things that are normal and things that are surreal. (Source)

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3

Gerard Manley Hopkins

The Major Works

This authoritative edition brings together all of Hopkins's poetry and a generous selection of his prose writings to explore the essence of his work and thinking.

Gerard Manley Hopkins (1844-89) was one of the most innovative of nineteenth-century poets. During his tragically short life he strove to reconcile his religious and artistic vocations, and this edition demonstrates the range of his interests. It includes all his poetry, from best-known works such as "The Wreck of the Deutschland" and "The Windhover" to translations, foreign language poems, plays, and verse fragments, and...
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Recommended by Alex Carlile, and 1 others.

Alex CarlileAnyone who has practised criminal law for as long as I have knows that human beings are ‘dappled things’ – there is something ugly about everyone beautiful. (Source)

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4
Recommended by Alex Carlile, and 1 others.

Alex Carlilehe notion in this book, which is that something that can be hugely lethal can also bring about good, is one that we have to recognise and embrace. (Source)

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5

Daniel Deronda

As Daniel Deronda opens, Gwendolen Harleth is poised at the roulette-table, prepared to throw away her family fortune. She is observed by Daniel Deronda, a young man groomed in the finest tradition of the English upper-classes. And while Gwendolen loses everything and becomes trapped in an oppressive marriage, Deronda's fortunes take a different turn. After a dramatic encounter with Mirah, a young Jewish woman, he embarks on a search for her lost family and finds himself drawn into ever-deeper sympathies with Jewish aspirations and identity. 'I meant everything in the book to be... more
Recommended by Alex Carlile, and 1 others.

Alex CarlileIf you can find the time please read Daniel Deronda because it is part of the essential bibliography for life. (Source)

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