Brilliant books for every kind of dad

Louis Theroux is one of our most entertaining and well-loved public figures. In his revealingly honest memoir – dubbed ‘absorbing and surprisingly candid’ by the Telegraph Magazine – he paints a vivid picture of his quirky, varied and eclectic career, from a childhood riddled with anxiety to his phenomenally successful documentaries.

The book draws on his natural observational skills and dry wit, whilst also shining a light on the darker areas of his career, such as the moment when the revelations surrounding Jimmy Savile – one of Theroux’s former subjects – were brought to light.

Me is the heartfelt and candid memoir of world-renowned musician Elton John. We all know the name, and we’ve all heard his songs, but it hasn’t always been glamour and admiration for the singer-songwriter. From his dramatic rise to fame, to coming out as gay whilst in the public spotlight, Me follows the ups and downs of an incredible life.

Read Elton John on life, fate and embracing your bad side.

Discover seven amazing stories about Elton John you never would've known.

There is no one quite like brian blessed. this funny, warm-hearted, life-affirming, loud and unique memoir from the much-loved actor, film star, trained undertaker, unlikely diplomat, secret romantic, martial artist and mountaineer should keep even the noisiest dad quiet for an hour or two. 

Daring dads will love this unflinching autobiography of a real-life hero - one of the world's greatest snipers, Craig Harrison. Craig catapults us into the heart of the action as he describes his active service in the Balkans, Iraq and Afghanistan, and gives heart-stopping accounts of his sniper ops as he fought for his life on the rooftops of Basra and the barren hills of Helmand province. 

In My Life in Football Keegan tells the story of his remarkable rise through the sport.

Fifty years since making his professional debut, Keegan tells the full story of the exhilarating highs and excruciating lows, from that epic battle with Sir Alex Ferguson and Manchester United in the 1995-6 season, as well as the pain of managing England and, finally, the shattering truth about his unhappy return to Newcastle in the controversial Mike Ashley era.

Brilliant, funny, passionate, deeply moving and incredibly honest, My Life in Football is the story of the miner’s son from Doncaster who became a superstar and was known to his adoring fans as ‘King Kev’.

In his trademark straight-talking, no-nonsense style Mark Webber reveals his amazing life on and off the formula one race track, including a searingly honest account of his rivalry with teammate Sebastian Vettel. The perfect gift for any petrol-head dad.

Told with unflinching honesty, this is the ultimate rugby book for all fans of the sport.

Learning from the extreme highs and lows of his own playing career he shows what it takes to be the best in the world and how everything he has learned about the game, both on and off the pitch, has gone into plotting England’s route to the top of world rugby.

Brilliant, honest, combative – in My Life and Rugby, Eddie Jones tells his story for the first time, including the full inside story of England’s 2019 World Cup campaign.

In 1949, Aloysius Archer is released from prison, where he’s been serving time for a crime he didn’t commit. He arrives in the dusty Southern town of Poca City, looking for a peaceful new start, but on his first night of freedom he meets local business tycoon Hank Pittleman. Pittleman offers Archer well-paid work as a debt collector, but soon Archer finds he’s taken on more than he bargained for. He becomes embroiled in a feud between the town’s most dangerous residents and, when one of them dies, Archer is the prime suspect.

Discover David Baldacci’s books in order.

Our favourite dystopian novel of recent years, Station Eleven moves backwards and forwards in time, presenting the recognisable years just before a flu epidemic brought about the collapse of civilisation alongside the strange and altered world that exists twenty years after. It’s a novel that asks questions about art and fame and about the relationships that sustain us through anything – even the end of the world.

WINNER OF THE PULITZER PRIZE FOR POETRY

The Tradition by Jericho Brown, is a cutting and necessary collection, relentless in its quest for survival while revelling in a celebration of contradiction.

His poems address fatherhood, race, queerness, worship, trauma and more with precision and clarity. In his own personal style, the duplex – a combination of the sonnet, the ghazal and the blues – Brown has created a daring and revolutionary collection. 

A noir narrative written with the intensity and power of poetry, The Long Take is one of the most remarkable – and unclassifiable – books of recent years.

Walker, a D-Day veteran suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder, can’t return home to rural Nova Scotia, and looks instead moves to New York, to Los Angeles and San Francisco in search of freedom, anonymity and repair.

While Walker tries to piece his life together, America is beginning to come apart: deeply paranoid, doubting its own certainties, riven by social and racial division, spiralling corruption and the collapse of the inner cities . . . 

The Long Take is about a good man, brutalised by war, haunted by violence and apparently doomed to return to it – yet resolved to find kindness again, in the world and in himself.

Curious father figures will love this wonder-filled journey through space, time and beyond from internationally renowned astrophysicist Christophe Galfard. Through brilliant storytelling and humour rather than graphs and equations,  The Universe in your Hand takes us deep into questions about the beginning of time and the future of humanity. 

By 1979, we knew all that we know now about the science of climate change – what was happening, why it was happening, and how to stop it. Over the next ten years, we had the very real opportunity to stop it. Obviously, we failed.

In this book, Rich is able to provide more of the context for what did – and didn’t – happen in the 1980s and, crucially what those past failures mean for us now. It is not just an agonizing revelation of missed opportunities, but a clear-eyed assessment of what we can and must do before it's truly too late.

People who have already embarked on genealogical research, discovering unknown ancestors and long forgotten family secrets, are now embarking on the new frontier of popular, participatory history – the history of houses.

Written by Melanie Backe-Hansen and David Olusoga, A House Through Time offers readers the tools to explore the history of their own homes, as well as a vivid history of the British city. It is a phenomenal insight into the history we can see every day on the streets where we live.

In the last winter of World War Two, Winston Churchill, Franklin D. Roosevelt and Joseph Stalin arrived in Yalta. Over eight remarkable days they decided on how to conduct the final stages of the war against Germany, how a defeated and how occupied Germany should be governed. Only three months later, less than a week after the German surrender, Roosevelt was dead and Churchill was writing to the new President, Harry S. Truman, of ‘an iron curtain’ that was now ‘drawn down upon [the Soviets’] front’. Meticulously researched and vividly written, in Eight Days at Yalta Diana Preston chronicles eight days that created the post-war world. 

Unflinching, confronting taboos and revealing hitherto unknown scandals, Olusoga describes how the lives of black and white Britons have been entwined for centuries.

Drawing on new genealogical research, original records, and expert testimony, Black and British reaches back to Roman Britain, Elizabethan ‘blackamoors’, to the black Britons fighting at Trafalgar and in both World Wars, and the American slavery upon which the great industrial boom of the nineteenth century was built. It is a powerful exploration of the fact that Black British history is woven into the cultural and economic histories of the nation. It is not a singular history, but one that belongs to us all.

An anonymous lawyer working in the criminal justice system, The Secret Barrister shines a light on the inner workings of the legal system to show how it is broken, who broke it, and why you should care. From cuts to legal aid to the treatment of rape victims during trials, The Secret Barrister is a stark look at a system that is held up as the best in the world, through the eyes of an insider. This is a shocking, funny and moving journey through the legal system, highlighting how often it fails those that it is meant to protect.