Happy New Year from Team 26. Sometimes we’re called ‘the board’ but I think ‘team’ suits us better. If you haven’t met us, we’re a core group of 26ers who meet quarterly to help shape projects, events, and the general direction of 26. We’re volunteers who, like you, love words and the role they play in many aspects of life.
We had our first meeting of the year last week, and there’s lots to look forward to in 2026. We’ve got a number of projects underway and coming up, and we’re launching monthly online get-togethers for members (the first one’s on 19th February).
26 is run by and for members. So, if you have an idea for an event, or passion project brewing, or something else 26ish in mind, get in touch. We’re here to guide, not to gate-keep, and we’d love to get you more involved.
To kick off 2026, Max suggested we compile a reading list (he’s full of good ideas). So, here it is! We hope you enjoy.
Andy Hayes
Henry V: The Astonishing Rise of England’s Greatest Warrior King
by Dan Jones
My recommendation is Dan Jones’ biography of Henry V. Spoiler alert: Henry was not the brat Prince Hal in his youth so memorably portrayed by Shakespeare in the titular play. What is clear, however, is that Henry was an exceptional young man – not just a warrior, but a lover of literature and a keen student of finance, logistics, and politics.
There was, naturally, a transition from prince to king: a deep awareness of the seriousness of kingship, and the need to wear a mask at all times. In that sense, perhaps Shakespeare got it right in spirit. Henry was, above all, a performer – one backed by formidable capability, not only in battle, but in ruling fairly and decisively as well.
Julia Webb-Harvey
Hekate
by Nikita Gill
I’ve recently become a bit transfixed by the Dark Goddesses, so when I came upon this in Waterstones, Truro, I grabbed it. At home, I opened Hekate and began to read. It was a novel in verse. Oh heck. How had I missed this? Even for a 26-er dabbling in poetry, was this what I wanted?
Dear Reader, I was transfixed.
Hekate is the Greek goddess of the underworld, the night, crossroads and of magic. Don’t know which route to choose, invoke Hekate. She lives in the shadows, confined there because of circumstance as a childling, and the book narrates her quest to find her own power. Gill’s verse amplifies that otherworldly quality, and I eased into Gill’s craft.
Gill conjures Hekate from the pages. The verse form gives the story a dreamlike, almost mythic rhythm. It is a retelling of myth, but Gill gives it currency. She takes us on an exploration of big themes – grief, trauma, identity and reclaiming power. What makes Hekate shine is its reclamation as a story for today – for our society, for women. The rage and resilience Hekate feels, feels familiar. She is an icon for today, for those of us finding our way and wanting to shine. It is a reminder that finding your voice is an act of rebellion, of strength.
Gill’s book is fabulous. You will read it and wonder, and for the writers, you will want to read it again to work out quite how she achieves so much in her form. Styx and an undisclosed other form the trilogy and I will be queueing up to devour them.
Wendy Sacks Jones
Night Train to Odesa: Covering the Human Cost of Russia’s War
by Jen Stout
The book I recommend is Night Train to Odesa by Scottish reporter Jen Stout. It’s the account of a young freelance journalist who ventures – without any institutional backup – into some of the most battered parts of Ukraine to witness destruction and loss and to talk to those whose lives have been thrown into turmoil by the Russian invasion.
This is rapportage that works on many levels. It’s a story of danger and unpredictability that offers insights into the tangled history and politics of this part of the world. But more than that, it’s a vivid and very human story about the ordinary – and extraordinary – people of Ukraine. Jen Stout meets them outside their devastated homes, on trains, in hospitals and bunkers, cafés and bars, people who’ve lost so much and yet who fight back, physically and in spirit, and who still manage to find joy and humour in life. It’s a story of love, friendship and courage, told with sympathy and admiration.
If you have any interest in what’s happening in Ukraine – and I believe we all should – do read it.
Martin Lee
North Woods
by Daniel Mason
I’m recommending for a New Year read, the first novel I read in 2025. When I was young, I lived for a while in Massachusetts, and our family bought a patchwork quilt which I had on my bed all the way through childhood. This novel is also a patchwork quilt from Massachusetts, all stitched together around the same small area of land – the North Woods of the title – that passes from owner to owner from the colony’s Puritan early days through to the present day.
It’s an amazing performance – essentially the fictional biography of a piece of land, which comes with its own house. The patchwork includes many different styles of writing, and illustration, and tones. It does take a bit of concentration, because it’s not a conventional narrative, but a superbly rich and rewarding read.
Another tool that 26ers might enjoy if they are looking for inspiration is the The Tourist Map of Literature. https://www.literature-map.com/
It’s a lovely digital ‘if you like then you’ll love’ device which simply shows you which company your favourite writers keep. Simple, beguiling, mildly addictive and introduces you to new names that you can then go off and research.
Paul White
Question 7
by Richard Flanagan
I’ve read this fascinating book twice so far. I may well read it a third time, soon. Some synonyms for the word fascinating are: absorbing, engrossing, enthralling, and riveting. Question 7 is all of those things.
From its intriguing title to its mesmeric conclusion, it tells a real-life story that is part of many other stories, both real and fictional. With links that surprise, the consequences of each narrative are gradually revealed as the book progresses from a trip to Japan where the author meets some of those who inflicted cruelties on his father as a POW in World War Two to the retelling of an event that led to a near death experience in Tasmania.
Some chapters read like prose poems, others like meditations and yet more cross over from memoir to history to biography. At the centre of it all is the terrifying fact that had the atom bomb not been dropped on Hiroshima, the author would not be alive today.
The book’s enigmatic title is inspired by a parody of school book mental arithmetic questions from a short story by Checkov. It’s quoted on page 24.
Driven by compassion, guilt and forgiveness, Flanagan writes that “the words of a book are never the book, the soul of it is everything.”
Alastair Creamer
Monkey Grip
by Helen Garner
This is a tough one because at the time I didn’t really enjoy it. I love Australian writers yet hadn’t encountered Helen Garner until she won the Baillie Gifford Prize last year for her Collected Diaries – ‘How to End a Story’. There was much praise at the time. As I was buying them (a weighty tome), the bookseller pointed me towards other more transportable books by her. Despite my initial indifference, Monkey Grip just clung on in my mind in a perfect exemplification of the story.
Single Mum, Nora, hangs out with a junkie, Javo, and cannot shake him off or out of her mind. She rails against his selfishness, habits, disappearances and yet … Nothing really happens. Characters float in an undefined world of shifting homes, sporadic childcare, hanging by the pool. She doesn’t flesh out her characters so your imagination is doing a lot of the work. In other words, it’s brilliantly written for the subject at hand. As Garner says, “I am trimming so close to the bone that a reader will require either good will or sensitive nerves. Naturally I would prefer the latter.” You won’t be able to shake it loose.
Sophie Gordon
Notes from here & now (in time and space)
by Oliver Jeffers (Sign up)
Image: Oliver Jeffers, Kinetic Ghost (See more art)
I’m possibly being a bit sneaky, but my contribution is not a book. It’s a newsletter! Not the 26 newsletter – it goes without saying that that’s top of my reading list every year – but I reckon there’s room in your inbox for another one that’s really worth dipping into. Oliver Jeffers’ Notes from here & now (in time and space) is described as “a monthly dose of optimism, art, and inspiration, sent straight to your inbox on the first Tuesday of each month.”
I can confirm, it is exactly that.
What’s not to love?
You’ll find the sign-up box by scrolling to the bottom of Jeffers’ News Page.
Max Parfitt
The Marriage Portrait
by Maggie O’Farrell
My reading is often defined by my work. I work for an opera company, and my year breaks down (roughly) into seasons. Spring means reading about our upcoming shows and their context (this year that will mean immersing myself in Mozart and late 18th Century Vienna). Summer is a write-off of 18-hour day touring and snatched moments of poetry. And then there’s the Autumn. 2024 was dedicated to Michael Ondaatje – a long overdue exploration of what was out there beyond The English Patient – and 2025, inspired by Chloe Xiao’s (then still “upcoming”) film version of Hamnet, became the season of Maggie O’Farrell.
My recommendation then, is O’Farrell’s award-winning 2022 book, The Marriage Portrait. Though not quite matching the astonishing depth pressed into the figure of Anne in Hamnet, the world here is painted in exquisite detail with addictively ornate prose – a stylistic shift worthy of the move from muddy, wood-beamed Stratford to the exotic settings of palatial Florence and Ferrara (both in the 16th Century).
And if the prose isn’t tempting enough, there is the narrative hook we receive within the first few pages:
Her husband is sitting down… when it comes to her with a peculiar clarity, as if some coloured glass has been put in front of her eyes, or perhaps removed from them, that he intends to kill her.
John Simmons
The Trees
by Percival Everett
I’d been given two copies of James by Percival Everett, which seemed to be telling me something. I read one and gave one to my son – we both loved it, a novel telling the story in Mark Twain’s Huckleberry Finn from the viewpoint of Jim the slave. At its heart is an intriguing concept of the way our perceptions are shaped by language.
So I sought out earlier novels by the same writer and bought a copy of The Trees that had also been Booker-prize shortlisted. It’s an extraordinary novel, almost impossible to characterise – a hilarious, unsettling, horrific satire about serial murders in Mississippi, then spreading to other parts of the USA. The murder scene is always gruesomely the same, the mutilated, castrated white victim with a nearby black corpse. How did it happen?
There seems to be a connection to the murder of Emmett Till by white racists in the 1960s. The story is told in short chapters that make for a fast compelling read, with a colourful cast of detectives, victims and potential victims. The dialogue is snappy, fast and often funny.
It’s a book to make you think about the continuing legacy of slavery in the USA. Did the Civil War ever finish? Written during Trump’s first presidency, the message is even more relevant during his second. It’s unlike anything I’ve ever read – I urge you to read it too.