BOOKS IN MY LIFE

There are some books that I want to forget very quickly so that I can have the pleasure of reading them afresh. Many I wanted to forget and did, other I never had any trouble forgetting, it is evident when I sometimes come across such unmemorable pulp. 
But literature with the glow of life and truth, or even their embers, tend to burn itself into the mind. 

AUTOBIOGRAPHIES

Those which figure highest in my estimation among those I read among all 20th Century literature. Some of the many autobiographical books I have read were especially formative or inspiring in my case. I do not include here the autobiographies of famous WW2 fighter aces, which figure among the most exciting and amazing of exploits, which naturally inspired me as a young man and caused my choosing the R.A.F. when I had to do National Service.

Travels with a Donkey in the Cevennes by R.L. Stevenson. His romantic camping journey through Languedoc an age ago before local life traditions were largely lost - what ease of observation! Also An Inland Voyage - his canoe journey through the canals and waterways of France. His lengthy visit to USA is depicted in Across the Plains, and The Silverado Squatters and The Amateur Emigrant.  Far Away and Long Ago by W.H. Hudson - London 1918. Beautiful times, a mystical childhood in turn-of-the-century Argentina, a lost world. Deep and moving, spell-binding.  and Lazy Days in Patagonia a fascinatingly frank account of the author's life mainly as a wandering kind of gaucho.
Son of Adam by Denis Foreman - 1990 André Deutsch Ltd. Growing up as a very precocious child in an aristocratic Scottish family in a Dumfries castle. Remarkable and humorous record of the natural and long-lost social environment and of the process of his turbulent self-liberation from strictly conformist religious parents. Out of the ordinary writing...  Arrow in the Blue, The Invisible Writing (+ Scum of the Earth). Among the most perceptive autobiography written and what experiences! Unfortunately, I did not discover Arthur Koestler's wonderful autobiographical books from the early 50s until 1998! Koestler was a famous, spoke many languages fluently - a very gifted and innovative journalist before he became a communist. He was the only non-Russian journalist to be allowed to travel the length and breadth of the Soviet Union in the 1930s. What he saw was terrible, but then he rationalised it as necessary to the progress o the dictatorship of the proletariat and the elimination of all class differences. He suffered accordingly and was imprisoned in Spain, surviving tortures to reach England - at that time an oasis of peace and sanity in a mad European world. His jailers talked about such things as gardening, which astonished him! Then he liberated himself from ideology and became a prominent critic of communism and the USSR! Later he grew interested in parapsychology, because of an experience he had when at the end of his tether in the Spanish jail.
To War with Whittaker  The Wartime diaries of the Countess of Ranfurly 1939-45. She defied the War Office and the Colonel Blimps of Cairo and raced off the the Middle East where her husband was posted to Palestine. He was taken prisoner so she vowed to stay until they were reunited. (Whittaker was their valet). She became a top level secretary to major figures and met Churchill, Eisenhower and a host of others. Brilliantly written with common sense perspicacity and insight into the workings of command.
The Lost World of the Kalahari" ('58) Laurens van der Post. As close to mystical as anything that is not religious. I re-read the very great 1958 classic in 1991: just as heart-moving and heartrending as it was 30 years ago. Deep! One of his very best books. Also the follow-up about Bushmen, The Heart of the Hunter" ('61) and the forerunner Venture to the Interior ('52). Most van der Post books are excellent. The Night of the New Moon ('70) is tremendous. Also Yet Being Someone Other ('82) and Walk with a White Bushman (conversations - one of the latest). All in Penguin, UK.
Hunger by Knut Hamsun ("Sult") made a lasting impression on me well before I first visited Norway. It is a dramatised version of his own time in Christiania while trying to become an author. After moving there I read virtually all his works and liked most of them. It conveys a sense of Oslo (then Christiania) which lingered strongly even in the 1960s. Oddly, I had a walk-on role in a Danish film 'Sult' in which Per Oscarsson starred as Hamsun. (See image here)
Dear Theo by Irving Stone - being the self-portrait of Vincent van Gogh through his letters to his brother Theo. The lonely soul unburdens himself and shows us the stringent demands of life in his time, especially as a struggling artist. It surely leaves a deep but positive impression on anyone with a heart.
Father and Son (1907) by Edmund Gosse (autobiographical 'novel') A study in depth of growing up with a religiously-obsessed (Pentecostal) father. Very instructive about falsity of religion..
The Flax of Dream - William Stephenson's semi-autobiographical trilogy, especially the beautiful. nostalgic and deeply perceptive descriptions of boyhood (in Dandelion Days) entranced me in my very early twenties. (His semi-autobiographical many-volume The Chronicles of Ancient Light series cover his world war experiences)  Our Kate Catherine Cookson (Futura 1990) Autobiography. Growing up in Shields and hard times galore. My mother went to the same school, so we knew how authentic her own story was.
Surprised by Joy by C.S. Lewis was autobiography at its peak (and the moving film of it - Shadowlands - is too).
Patrick Leigh Fermor - An Adventure - by Artemis Cooper is an impressive biography of one of England's unassuming heroes and literary geniuses, little known except to all celebrated persons in UK who all loved him - even as a young man he was loved by almost all he met and as he developed as a writer and became a massive hero by kidnapping a German General in Crete during 2nd WW (so becoming one of Fleming's models for James Bond) and had countless friends and admirers. His knowledge of seven languages and hundreds of dialects across Southern and Eastern Europe and of the peoples he sought out to learn about their ways of life (mostly people lost to history now) was behind his much rewarded books about his walk as a youth across Europe in 1933 -1934. He lived half his life in Greece where he was regarded as a parallel to Lord Byron. He finally accepted a knighthood at last before his death in 2011.
My Days is a great memoir by the famous S. Indian writer R.K. Narayen. 
My India by Jim Corbett (the once famous hunter of maneaters after whom a National Reserve is named in N. India) This is really touching, a description of his unrelenting work - a transport manager organising the railways at a huge junction on the Ganges - and becoming much loved by all his workers, a true selfless server of India.

Shantaram by Gregory David Roberts Though this is not directly autobiography, it is made into a most thrilling saga - most of it authentic events that happened to him. It has the hallmark to those of us who know India and have some knowledge of life at street level to be truly authentic. The dark side of India - darker than most can conceive - is also brought forth, but also the many good things about a people's spirit under some of the toughest circumstances in the world. Essential for one who wants to know how India, and Indian corruption and crime, work.
The Sun In The Morning. (London 1990 M.M. Kaye's autobiographical book on her growing up in India was a glimpse into that other world
Trader Horn ('The Ivory Coast in the Earlies') by Alfred Aloysius Horn (1927 Jonathan Cape). Truly remarkable account by one of the earliest trader/discoverers of virgin Africa (in the 19th century). A great classic.  Karen Blixen's African Farm and its follow-up are excellent captures of a lost world of Africa almost untroubled by colonialism, truly excellent record of natural Africa and Africans before it all became too distorted by the British and others.  Beryl Markham's autobiography West With the Night is a gem of writing, and more vital than Blixen (she knew many of the same people & places too). 
The Flame Trees of Thika Elspeth Huxley's African reminiscences are brilliant evocations of Africa prior to major colonization, as also are her Memories of an African Childhood (1959) and The Mottled Lizard (1962)
A Postillion Struck by Lightning, Snakes and Ladders, An Orderly Man by Dirk Bogarde are fine autobiographical writings. Real insight into the film industry most lucidly and originally explained from tell-all personal experience.
The Last Barrier Reshad Feild. How he came onto the Sufi path. Mystical and well written, also practical, but essentially a book that is unrealistic about life and so can mislead one down a path of fruitless, unworldly 'spirituality'.
Meetings with Remarkable Men G.I. Gurdjieff (repub. London 1983) and, not least, C.S. Nott's "Teachings of Gurdjieff" (London 1961) - the best book about Gurdjieff. Fascinating, but highly likely to be largely bogus.
Living with the Himalayan Masters by Swami Rama, the biography of Swami Rama´s years of youth and young manhood, written down by Swami Ajaya. One of the most 'amazing' books on Indian spirituality with great interest and charm (much of it literally unbelievable to those who have truly put themselves on the line to learn whether there could be any real substance in it). Besides, Swami Rama was a sexual abuser, as has been testified by some of his victims!
Flight to Arras and Wind, Sand and Stars. (Both excellent books on his flying exploits) by Antoine St. Exupery.
The Flying Carpet (like St. Exupery and even more full of incident) by Halliburton.  The Diary of Samuel Pepys Classic English historical diary by the Secretary to the Navy (covers the Black Plague and Fire of London).
Moab is my Washpot - Uninhibited boyhood by Stephen Fry. Also the sequel The Fry Chronicles The making of a genius despite university and after.

 First World War autobiographies:

Robert Graves' Goodbye to All That was very good, but not as good as the 3 volumes of 

Memories of a Fox-Hunting Man by Siegfried Sassoon. 

William Stephenson's semi-autobiographical trilogy The Flax of Dream  was influential in my very early twenties. 

T.E. Lawrence's The Seven Pillars of Wisdom is an unavoidable book on Arabia in WWI. The film 'Lawrence of Arabia' is hard to reconcile with the book on which it is based.

My Childhood (2 volumes) by Maxim Gorky. A most famous autobiography reflecting pre-revolutionary Russia
also  Fragments of a Diary and Mother, Fragments of a Diary  and others. Befriended by Stalin, but not a Stalinist himself.

My Early Life, Winston Spenser Churchill (Brilliant)

BIOGRAPHIES (only the most interesting ones I recall)

The Last Lion (covers 1874-1932) by William Manchester (an American - pub. Sphere Books 1983). Much of it is literally like a new piece of history to me (and I have read a good deal by and about Churchill before). Its a very many-sided, superbly researched account - and a spell-binding read. Hence, a must - one which I think shows Churchill to have been far and away the greatest political genius and a true master of the English language this century, a super-productive brain and writer and also a marvellous person with tremendous character. 

Winston Churchill As I Knew Him 1965 by Violet Bonham Carter (daughter of P.M. Asquith), Excellent. Up to 1'st World War, and the biography The Young Churchill.

Wittgenstein - The Duty of Genius by Ray Monk (Vintage 1991), if you want to get the bottom line on 20'th century philosophy, with all the hokey-pokey revealed too - its chief genius and a very remarkable man too. Brilliant and moving penetration by the biographer!

Aldous Huxley - The Turning Points (Vol. 2 '39 to '63) by Sybille Bedford. This is where many of my generation's ideas and experiences began!

The Eagle and the Dove  by V. Sackville-West  -  on St. Teresa of Avila {1515-1582} and St Thérèse of Lisieux {1873-1897} London 1943. (pub. Michael Joseph Ltd.) page 10f. This is Christian mysticism in practice. Educative, but should be taken with a teaspoon of salt.

The Life and Character of Dickens by H.C. Dent

Biography of H.G. Wells by Anthony West, 'H. G. Wells: Aspects of a Life.'

J.R. Tolkien is an amusing biography (Daniel Grotta J.R.R.Tolkien Architect of Middle Earth ??)

Life of Nelson. Robert Southey An early biography which somewhat glorifies Nelson and his exploits, but not without some good reason.

Life of Tolstoy by his friend Aylmer Maude. Thorough work… 

Endurance: Shackleton's Incredible Voyage by Alfred Lansing (the most inspiring Antarctic expedition)
Scott of the Antarctic. by Reginald Pound (1966). The fatal expedition to the South Pole

Some diverse non-fiction

Farmers' Glory by A.G. Street (On pre-motorised English farming - and the loss of a culture it brought)

Crowdie and Cream Finlay J. Macdonald (Memoirs of a Hebridean childhood) Very evocative.

The Distant Scene, The Parish Lantern - Muddy Boots and Sunday Suits - A Lad of Evesham Vale - The Secrets of Bredon Hill - Golden Sheaves, Black Horses -  When Village Bells were Silent are all semi-autobiographical or historical English country life accounts by farmer Fred Archer from the times of his childhood and youth. All in Futura Books. All from the Evesham area from his childhood and youth. He captures a lost world of rustic life, into which he grew up and re-discovered through his lucid and sympathetic writing. All in Futura Books.  ('For nostalgia, Archer leaves the field standing').

ENGLISH NOVELS (Just a selection of those I have read, mostly favourites - I must have read well over a thousand.)

The Bridge of San Luis Rey by Thornton Wilder. Gifted, deep, moving.

The Castle by Franz Kafka made an impression on me - made me feel confused & the meaninglessness of my existence. Later The Trial, and the short stories like Metamorphosis extended the existential quest.

Prospero’s Cell, Reflections on a  Marine Venus, and Bitter Lemons are pearls of writing by Lawrence Durrell. This Mediterranean island trilogy which describes Corfu, Crete and Cyprus from pre-War days is truly excellent. The Alexandria Quartet was also very absorbing to me in the 1960s. I once read The Black Book and The Labyrinth, Tunc and other later works, but they were not as appealing as his island trilogy. His travel book about the South of France is excellent and original, however.

A High Wind in Jamaica Richard Hughes's still classic child psychological/adventure novel. Also his excellent sea novel.

The Lord of the Flies", Pincher Martin and The Inheritors by William Golding are all good writing. The Inheritors is like a dramatisation of a very early and inspiring short story by H.G. Wells in The Grisly People, from which the idea doubtless came (about Neanderthal man).

Green Mansions W.H. Hudson (unusual about primitive tribes in rainforest) also his A Shepherd's Life about shepherding in Wiltshire - very good.  

The Dean's Watch  Elizabeth Goudge. Spiritual tale of a clocksmith in a Fenland cathedral city - probably Ely.(Hodder & Stoughton. UK 1960) 

Eyeless in Gaza, Brave New World, Crome Yellow, Grey Eminence, The Doors of Perception, Heaven and Hell, The Island - I also read the earlier works like Point Counterpoint, Crome Yellow, Those Barren Leaves, Time Must Have a Stop, After Many a Summer Aldous Huxley: All good stuff.

Down and Out in London & Paris by George Orwell (influenced me a lot) Also the ominious '1984', and Animal Farm. Then his striking account of colonial rottenness in Burma Days. The early socialist novels The Road to Wigan Pier, Keep the Aspidestra Flying were formative then too.

Decline and Fall, A Handful of Dust, The Loved Ones, Vile Bodies, Scoop,  Brideshead Revisited, Work Suspended and Scott-King's Modern Europe, The Sword of Honour trilogy.All by Evelyn Waugh. 
 
Brighton Rock, The Quiet American, The Heart of the Matter, Our Man in Havana, The Power and the Glory, The Third Man, The End of th Affair, Loser Takes All etc. all by Graham Greene.

Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man James Joyce: is excellent. But I did not find Ulysses charming; its rather low life pub romanticism… even though it revolutionised some literary style. I never read more than a page of Finnigan’s Wake (more obscure, sophisticated, and presumptuous than Schoenberg in music). 
 
The Antarctic and The Lonely Skier by Hammond Innes. Also several of his other thrillers with a connection to historical events. An early proponent of the cliff-hanging thriller.

Moderns like William Golding (The Lord of the Flies, Pincher Martin and others) and Iris Murdoch's Oxford intrigues like A severed Head have lost appeal for me - a bit too arty somehow. Her award-winning  The Sea is o.k. but rather too soporific English novel style-

Room with a View, and Howard's End by E.M. Forster Novels set in Italy and England exploring early C20 relationships. His most famous novel (and excellent Merchant Ivory film) was A Passage to India (see under Indian novels).

Landfall, No Highway, An Old Captivity, Ruined City, The Far Country - all sound novels by Neville Shute (see also war novels)

The Cazalet Chronicle (Light Years, Marking Time, Confusion, Casting Off) by Elizabeth Jane Howard. A series about a Southern English family from the late 1930s through the 2nd WW and post-war. A brilliant depiction of varied family life, including a most inspired account of the individuality of many small children and their growth to adulthood.

HISTORICAL NOVELS

Robert Harris is the latest genius writer about historical events, using them imaginatively in novel form - dead exciting. 
'Fatherland' covers the rise and fall of the Third Reich in novel form. His Archangel is a Cold War intrigue novel. 
Enigma by Robert Harris is a spy thriller partly fiction, but well-informed on the secret intelligence at Bletchley House and the British code-breakers who won the intelligence war hands down (is also an excellent film)

Robert Harris'  trilogy Imperium, Lustrum and Dictator covers the life of Cicero and is extremely good. He also wrote a brilliant reconstructive novel about Pompeii which shows much research into the greatest Roman aqueduct, the Augustina. 
Harris also wrote a factual book Selling Hitler on how the famous fake Hitler letters in the 1980s were promoted and exposed.

Quo Vadis? by Henryk Sienkiewicz (1896). A real thriller within a Christian belief system, but deep both historically and psychologically... the time of the early Christians. The book is shot through with naïve Christian faith and the scenes described are too imaginative, but also depict Roman life and time – especially those of Nero -in a most memorable fashion.

I, Claudius and Claudius the God  'historical novels' by Robert Graves are great - though not as historically perfect as many believe. But Count Belisarius is more convincingly accurate and even more spellbinding. Some life Belisarius had! Our trials are nought by comparison.

The Isles of Unwisdom - brilliant Robert Graves novel on the original Spanish expedition to pacify and colonise the Solomon Islands. Sergeant Lamb and Proceed Sergeant Lamb - based on research by Graves' into his wartime regiment's beginnings in the US War of Independence. Most informative.

Montrose, Witch Wood  and Midwinter, by John Buchan. Three exciting and well-founded historical novels about turbulent Scottish affairs. Witch Wood is about the 1640 Covenanters vs. Kirk etc. with much Scots dialect - Midwinter is about the failed rebellion of Bonnie Price Charlie (partly fascinating but the story is somewhat overdone).
 
he Last Valley by J. B Pick is a classic of the Thirty Years War, set in Germany 1638. (James Clavell made a film and so claimed a credit for the story too).
Whirlwind by James Clavell is a fact-oriented most revealing account of the revolution in Iran and its people. His Shōgun—miniseries (1980), Tai-Pan (1986) and Noble House—miniseries (1988) are gripping and give insight into old Japan.

Ken Follett is a contemporary author whose novels are masterpieces, often reconstructing historical periods, including The Pillars of the Earth (cathedral building in th middle ages in England and France, and WWII episodes dramatised in novel thriller form like Jackdaws, Hornet Flight and huge WWII espionage tale 'The Eye of the Needle'  plus the huge WW"2 trilogy 'Winter of the World'

OLD ENGLISH CLASSICS  

Kenilworth, Ivanhoe, Rob Roy, The Bride of Lammermoor & some others by Walter Scott

 A Tale of Two Cities, A Christmas Carol, Sketches by Boz, David Copperfield, The Pickwick Papers, The Old Curiosity Shop, Nicholas Nickelby, Great Expectations, Oliver Twist, Barnaby Rudge, Martin Chuzzlewit, Bleak House, Little Dorrit, The Chimes, Cricket on the Hearth, The Uncommercial Traveller, American Notes, The Mystery of Edwin Drood & others by Charles Dickens
 
The Cloister & the Hearth, (A tour de force of medieval Europe!) Its Never Too Late to Mend Charles Reade 

The Vicar of Wakefield, Oliver Goldsmith. 

Lorna Doone, R.D. Blackmore 1896 (romance set in England's West country on Exmoor in the C17 at the time of Judge Jeffries)
  
Lavengro and The Romany Rye (both authentic accounts about gypsies in the 1800s) by George Borrow, their first friend and defender in England… and his The Bible in Spain (daring travels in the 1800s as a New Testament 'salesman' under the very repressive R.C. church which banned it in Spain).

The Warden, Barchester Towers & four more in the series.  The Palliser novel series (Phineas Finn, The Eustace Diamonds etc.)
The Way We Live Now  all by Anthony Trollope, contemporary of Thackeray and Dickens.

Vanity Fair  by William M. Thackeray 

Pride and Prejudice, Sense and Sensibility, Emma by Jane Austen   
 
Youth - Heart of Darkness - Typhoon - The Nigger of the 'Narcissus' - Lord Jim -  The Secret Sharer - Almayer's Folly - An Outcast of the Islands. All novels about life at sea by William Conrad.

Mr. Polly. Kipps. War of the Worlds. War in the Air. The Island of Dr. Moreau. Tono Bungay, A Modern Utopia. The Passionate Lovers. Love and Mr. Lewisham all by H.G. Wells. His social novels, very good if outshone by his science fiction. 

The Fox. Sons and Lovers. Lady Chatterly's Lover. The Rainbow. D.H. Lawrence Unavoidable reading for literature followers. No longer very relevant in modern Europe.

Far from the Madding Crowd, The Woodlanders, The Mayor of Casterbridge, Under the Greenwood Tree, Tess of the d'Ubervilles, Jude the Obscure Thomas Hardy Similar to DHL, depict country Dorset life of the 19th century excellently. 

The Razor's Edge Somerset Maugham was perceptive about a Westerner and an Indian yogi (I don't like him much otherwise),

The Golden Notebook by Doris Lessing. A seminal sensible feminist novel. Many of her books are readable, especially as regards the emancipated views of women.

I also read dozens of other similar 'popular' but 2'nd class novelists, such as Eric Linklater, Warwick Deeping, Elisabeth Gouge, Mary Stewart, G.A. Henty etc. etc…  mostly forgotten.

EARLIER WORLD CLASSICS

Homer's Odysseus and Iliad. 
Vergil's Aenid.
Caesar's De Bello Gallico  (the Gallic Wars - esp. the conquest of Gaul and England)
Cervantes' Don Quixote
Dante's The Divine Comedy,
Marlowe's Dr. Faustus 
Goethe's Faust Parts 1 & 2 - Italian Journey, The Trials of Young Werther
Ibsen's Peer Gynt, A Doll's House, The Wild Duck. The Master Builder (once breakthrough novels on social issues… a rather dark Scandinavian atmosphere hangs over most of them, apart from Peer Gynt).
Most of Shakespeare's plays and poetry
Marlowe's Doctor Faustus

RUSSIAN LITERATURE (only my favourites included)

The Idiot, The Brothers Karamazov, Crime & Punishment, Notes from an Underground Cellar Fyodor Dostoevsky was my introduction to Russian literature, in which I read extensively.

War and Peace, Anna Karenina and The Cossacks  by Leo Tolstoy (also a Life of Tolstoy by his friend Aylmer Maude) 

Dead Souls & Taras Bulbul Gogol  also stories like Nevski Prospect

Dr. Zhivago Boris Pasternak

A Day in the Life of Ivan Denovitch, Cancer Ward and The Archipelago Gulag by Alexander Solzhenitsyn. 

The Master and the Mistress, Black Snow, and The Cossacks by Mikhael Bulgakov 

The Captain's Daughter by Alexander Pushkin
 Fathers and Sons by Turgenev is also great.

Chekov (collected stories)

U.S. AUTHORS

The more dated they are the better I seem to like 'em. In a way, at least some of Hemingway is unavoidable, like much of O'Henry, Scott Fitzgerald  and Steinbeck, I suppose. An early influence on me was Upton Sinclair with his modern historical series about the life and behind-the-scenes politics of the 20th century in Europe and U.S., of which the hero was Lanny Budd.  

During my academic years in Norway, I read most of Miller & Durrell, their letters & Alfred Perles etc. These included:-
The Colossus of Maroussi. The Tropic of Cancer, The Tropic of Capricorn, The Air-Conditioned Nightmare, Quiet Days in Clichy, The Cosmological Eye, Nexus, Sexus, Remember to Remember,  Black Spring, The Cosmological Eye, Big Sur and the Oranges of Hieronymus Bosch - Stand Still Like the Hummingbird all by Henry Miller 
I once used to love his work because of his honesty and liveliness, but I soon tired of his sex-fixation. Some of it stands up still - eg. Big Sur... I re-read this in 1991, probably the best and purest of Henry Miller's books. I was very surprised to see what an influence the ideas here apparently had on my earlier life in many respects... and on the whole culture too. It is also very deep in some places. A bit carried away in some, but always amusing and full of honest and unclicheed life, as so few books written nowadays can match. 

Moby Dick and Typee by Herman Melville. Typee is one of the most interesting accounts of a pre-civilized cannibal tribe, and has all the marks of a  true experience by Melville.

O. Henry's short stories are excellent. Most of James Thurber's humorous writings too (like Gamesmanship) .

U.S.A. John Dos Passos' large collage work is good.

A Farewell to Arms, A Moveable Feast, For Whom the Bell Tolls, Death in the Afternoon, The Old Man and the Sea, Across the River and into the Trees, Green Hills of Africa, Under Kilimanjaro, Islands in the Stream all by  Ernest Hemingway. His books are timeless literature - in famously succinct and direct language - reflecting his wide-ranging travels and activities. 

W. Scott Fitzgerald - The Great Gatsby.

Of Mice and Men, The Pearl & most others of John Steinbeck. Engaged social literature of the time - pre-WWII. 

Bernard Malamud is powerful and depressing too. A Jewish writer who is able to conjure up the horrors of being persecuted.

Norman Mailer can be perceptive in parts, esp. on pork barrel politics in US, but is rather a creep otherwise (my subjective opinion). His WWII novel - The Naked and the Dead - first exposed the actual horrors of the war in the Pacific.

Catch 22 by Joseph Heller  harrowing 'satire' but firmly based on the author's experiences in the Italian 2nd world air war.

Hawaii by James Michener. Many-sided, interesting history - esp. about Calvinistic missionaries... but too much low-life. Likewise, Thomas Pyncheon (Gravity's Rainbow) represents a genre I do not like at all. 

Some exceptions for me are:- 
Catcher in the Rye by Pierre Salinger was influential at the time, 
On The Road by Allen Ginsburg was the text of my semi-beatnik jazz years pre-1960.
Arthur Miller's Timebends (autobiog.) is good recent history, but a bit turgid at times. 

FRENCH LITERATURE

Alexandre Dumas, The Count of Monte Cristo, The Three Musketeers, The Man in the Iron Mask 
Le Grand Meulnes (Alain Fournier) - a one-off marvel, with a mysterious and charming atmosphere
Alphonse Daudet 'Les Lettres de mon Moulin' is a classic read. 
Celine's Journey to the end of the Night is quite good.
Alfred Camus The Plague is very basic as is The Myth of Sisyphus
André Gide Travels in the Congo is a fascinating earlyl travel book  
Dominique LaPierre's City of Joy is a very good dramatisation of Calcutta life in the slums. He also co-authored two excellent well-presented historical works: The Fall of Paris and Freedom At Midnight (co-authored with Larry Collins)
Marcel Pagnol his great French film Manon des Sources (based on the novel  L'eau des collines - also in English as Jean de Florette and Manon of the Springs ) is an unusual and gripping story that also captures Southern French Provencal life and peasant mentality. (was filmed by Jean Berri v. well with Gerard Depardieu as the hunchback J. de F.)
Gazelle-Boy is a most remarkable account of a boy brought up by gazelles, almost incredible but recorded scientifically by Jean-Claude Armen. 
Voltaire's Candide is a historical must for atheists. I read no other book by him.
Jean-Paul Sartre's novels and plays - read them all but now find them most tedious, but for Huis Clos (i.e. No Exit)
I'm not mad keen about modern French literature in general (definitely not the sophisticates like Robbe-Grillet, Sarraute, Margurite Duras etc), I do not hold classics like Madame Bovary very dear, I'm afraid. I've never read Proust! (Terrible omission and admission - don't tell anyone) 

GERMAN LITERATURE
 
Goethe's old My Italian Journey is still classic and Faust was a part of my education. Herman Hesse's Narziss and Goldmund, Damian, Peter Caminzind, Under the Wheel & Journey to the East were good. The Glass Bead Game much less than it was trumped up to be, I think.
 
Two Years in Tibet by a pre-war German author was excellent.

Buddenbrooks Thomas Mann.  I don't follow modern German writers, not since Günther Grass and his The Tin Drum.

SOME OTHER COUNTRIES

I don't go much for S. Americans, not even Marquez - except perhaps Jose Luis Borges and of course all books by the (anglicised) W.H. Hudson (Long Ago and Far Away especially).

Some of Knut Hamsun is very good in reflecting the times and scenes from Norway, such as the autobiographically influenced Hunger, and also The Growth of the Soil, The Dreamers, Victoria... Apart from Hamsun, I find Norwegian novels mostly poor by world standards, too narrow in cultural mentality. Modern Norwegian writers seem to lack the necessary wide life experience or genius.

The Greek author Kazantzakis is o.k. His Zorba the Greek made for an inspiring film. He portrays the passionate but violent mentality of Southern Greek society. 

I'm not much into the Italians, nor the Japanese, Chinese, Egyptians, Turks or Spanish (Cervantes too dated, I feel, despite all the hyperbole).

GENERAL HISTORY  Too many to list at this stage, but most notable, perhaps…

The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire by Edward Gibbon (1737-1794)  The Modern Library Abridgement 2003 (the famous classic)

The Rise and Fall of the British Empire  by Lawrence James Monograph overview which covers most of the major colonial ventures in a critical light.

Rubicon by Ian McEwan very readable on the Roman Republic from Caesar's fateful decision onwards.

History of the English-Speaking Peoples by Winston Churchill

Stalin by Simon Sebag Montefiore (definitive) 

Mao - The Unknown Story Juan Chang with Jon Halliday (definitive)

Wild Swans: Three Daughters of China -  by Jung Chang (brilliant dramatised account of life under the cultural revolution etc.)

Benito Mussolini - by Christopher Hibbert

The Life and Letters of Lord Macaulay  (Vol. II) by G.O. Trevelyan

The Secret Life of J. Edgar Hoover by Anthony Summers (the icon of the FBI was a corrupt and mafia-connected megalomaniac)

Hear That Lonesome Whistle Blow by Dee Brown (Pan books) History of the building of the trans -continental railroads across USA. The corruption, savagery, deceit and genocide involved was tremendous!

The Clinton War by Sidney Blumenthal (former aide to Bill Clinton documented the wholly unscrupulous and sleazy Republican dirty war against the (admittedly guilty) President (the Starr campaign etc. to impeach failed miserably!). 

The Socialist Tradition - Moses to Lenin  by Professor Sir Alexander Gray CBE, FRSE (6 January 1882 – 17 February 1968) was a Scottish civil servant, economist, academic (wrote a classic treatise on the history of ideas) , translator writer and poet. His demolition of socialist writers was devastating with great clarity of prose, based on in-depth research.

PHILOSOPHY, HISTORY OF IDEAS etc

For a 20-year period of my life I read intensively in philosophy, the history of ideas, psychology, sociology, anthropology and various other related sciences and subjects. I pick out some of the books which have been most formative whether by direct influence on my own ideas or by way of opposition to them. Among the more notable works I studied in depth were:

J.S. Mill's writing on logic (and on logic, among others, Aristotle/J.S. Mill/Russell/Susan Stebbing/Quine)

I read many excerpts from original works in philosophy , pre-Socratic thinkers like Heraclitus, Parmenides, Democritus etc. then Plotinus,  Augustine, Thomas Aquinas, Descartes, Spinoza, Locke, Berkeley, Leibnitz, Hegel, Schopenhauer, Kierkegaard, Nietzsche and history of ideas.

Those I studied in depth were:- 

Aristotle Nichomachean Ethics (the classical founding of ethical theory)

Plato The Republic (the first basis of European philosophy)

The Philosophy of Physical Science by Arthur Eddington

Science and the Modern World by A.N. Whitehead

An Essay on Man = Ernest Cassirer

A Treatise of Human Nature (1739) Douglas Hume
Enquiries concerning Human Understanding (1748)
Critical Thinking (logic and theory of science) by Max Black.
Immanuel Kant = Critique of Pure Reason, Prolegomena, Ethics etc.

The Transcendence of the Ego by Jean-Paul Sartre

Being and Nothingness by Jean-Paul Sartre

The Critique of Dialectical Reason by Sartre

The Crisis of European Philosophy by Edmund Husserl

The Phenomenology of Perception Maurice Merleau-Ponty

Being and Time by Martin Heidegger

Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus by Ludwig Wittgenstein

Philosophical Investigations  by  Ludwig Wittgenstein  (the most important work in C20 English philosophy)

Knowledge and Interest by Jürgen Habermas 

(H. Hengstenberg = Philosophische Anthropologie - only in German)

Language, Truth and Logic by A.J. Ayer

The Concept of Mind  by Gilbert Ryle
The Phenomenological Movement  Herbert Spiegelberg 

Contemporary Hermeneutics - Hermeneutics as Method, Philosophy and Critique by Joseph Bleicher

The History of Western Philosophy by Bertrand Russell

A History of Western Philosophy by W.T. Jones (2 vols)

A History of Philosophy 9 volumes: by Frederick Charles Copleston

Four Modern Philosophers by Arne Næss, his Filosofiens Historie and Communication and Argument (all of which I lectured and examined on for years)

Contemporary Schools of Metascience by Gerard Radnitsky

Wittgenstein's Poker: The Story of a Ten-Minute Argument Between Two Great Philosophers by David Edmonds

 ---
Various books and articles in general sciences like physics, astronomy, astro-physics, genetics, neurological science, biological theory, evolution, palaeontology, anthropology and various monographs on special subjects. General reading in the human sciences, from psychology to social anthropology, social philosophy to sociology, political science to economics.

Some formative thinkers for me in sociology were: Emile Durkheim, Max Weber, Eilert Sundt, the young Karl Marx, Peter Winch (The Idea of Social Science), Maurice Natanson, Gunnar Myrdal, Talcott Parsons, Erving Goffman (his role theory), R.D. Laing (The Divided Self and The Self and Others).

TRAVEL, NATURE & ANTHROPOLOGY (mostly excluding India)

Most notable to me were:

Eric Newby. Love and Life in the Appenines (his true war escape experiences), A Short Walk in the Hindu Kush, Slowly Down the Ganges, The Last Grain Race and many more (my favourite travel author)

A Time of Gifts, and Between the Woods and the Water by Patrick Leigh Fermour. His youthful trek from London to Istanbul through pre-war Europe. A sparkling record of the times, places and people encountered. 

Missionary Travels and Researches in South Africa Dr. David Livingstone (1857) One of the inspiring books of my boyhood – not because of the mission but because of the exotic land and people described.

Voyages of Discovery of Captain Cook by Cook 1906. Read in my boyhood in the fascination of distant lands and strange peoples. 

Travels in the Interior Districts of Africa: Performed in the Years 1795, 1796, and 1797. Park, Mungo (1816). London: John Murray. A boyhood favourite of mine.

Trader Horn by Aloysius Horn. One of the earliest accounts of discovery of West Africa. Pristine African nature before colonization.

Eothen - Charles Kingslake A classic travel story – the Middle East.

Exploration Fawcett Lt. Col. P.H. Fawcett/Brian Fawcett. London. 1924 Extraordinary travels in South America.

The Serpent and the Rainbow Wade Davis (Collins, 1986 UK)  Serious investigation into Caribbean voodoo secret society, 'zombie' drugs and magic.

I Heard the Owl Call My Name Margaret Craven (Dell, 1973) Life among the Indian tribes of British Colombia

The Aran Islands John M. Synge. 1907 Fascinating description of the Irish islands and their population in the Atlantic in Galway Bay to which Gaelic speakers and independent Irish fled from British autonomy. The original lifestyle of the Irish largely preserved as if in amber.

Elephant Bill by J.H. Williams. Most interesting account of teak hauling in Burma including partaking with elephants in the Burma campaign.

Elephant Kingdom by H.N. Marshall. On working elephants in teak forestry in Thailand by a teak wallah in the 1950s.

Circles in a Forest  by Dalene Matthee. Novel about wild forest elephants in South Africa. Very authentic.

CHILDHOOD FAVOURITES

One book above all held a great fascination for me in boyhood, The Wind in the Willows by Kenneth Grahame. Later his  seminal early essays from the viewpoint of childhood, The Golden Age and Dream Days were favourites too, written before he wrote the children's book with Ratty, Mole, Badger and Toad. Quintessentially English, with Edwardian values.

Several 'continuations' of 'The Wind in the Willows' appeared nearly a century later: 
A Fresh Wind in the Willows - Dixon Scott: very authentic, within Grahame's Willows-Weltanschauung and The Willows in Winter - William Horwood. A much more imaginative continuation, very authentic as to characters, which Horwood extends beautifully and makes the story at least as deep as the original.

First books: I really loved Babar the Elephant! Especially the very large version (reprinted much later by Vintage Books).

The Rupert annuals 1940 to 1945 published by the Daily Express... the first 'cartoon' illustrated children's books in colour and still the nicest! Printed with colours and details that the later Rupert books did not match.  Made available again in the 1990s in Vintage Collectors' editions. 

Dowsha, the Story of a Donkey. by Frediswid Stuges, 1937 About a donkey in Egypt, its trials & tribulations with various owners. A good glimpse of Egyptian life while a British colony.

Poo Lorn of the Elephants  Reginald Campbell, (1894-1950) 1930 London, Hodder and Stoughton. (Later wrote Teak Wallah about his work in the teak forests of Burma in the early 20th century.)

Alice in Wonderland and Through the Looking Glass - by Lewis Caroll. Unavoidable classic. Not liked much until more mature. Considered siminal children's literature and much quoted, not least by philosophers (and logicians, since the author - real name Charles Ludwige Dodgson - was a logic and maths don at Oxford)

Jungle John by John Budden: One of my top favourites from early days. An English boy with his father in the forests and jungles of India in early C20th.

Moonfleet,  by J.Meade Falkner. A real boys' thriller & smuggler classic! Set in Dorset during the big contraband era.

My Friend Mr. Leakey.  J.B.S. Haldane: Inventive magic nonsense long afore Harry Potter (djinns, flying carpets, mantras, materialisations). Haldane was a prominent intellectual and biologist who later settled in India saying that 50 years wearing socks was enough.

The Once and Future King by T.H. White (the classic boyhood Merlin and King Arthur book) and the follow-up too.

As to rabbits, so maligned by Badger and Grahame himself - and to set the record straight - the greatest book from their angle is:- 
Watership Down by Richard Adams. That only maligns human beings! Get down a cosy burrow and dig into it! But his follow-ups with other animals (Shardik - about a bear and The Plague Dogs) don't match it.

Rudyard Kipling: The Jungle Book. The Second Jungle Book. Just So Stories. Rewards and Fairies. The Light that Failed. Plain Tales from the Hills, Many Inventions and all Indian and other short stories. etc. Yet Kim was his greatest novel still widely regarded as the greatest classic on India, penetrating much of the heart of Indian consciousness. Also Naulahka, City of Dreadful Night  (i.e. Calcutta) and more such.

Quest for Kim  Peter Hopkins. An expert on the Great Game toothcombed India for evidence of the existence of characters in Kim with considerable luck.

In my grammar school days I set about finding and reading all the books by my four then-favourite authors: Robert Louis Stevenson, H.G. Wells, Conan Doyle and John Buchan. I did eventually get hold of about 80% of all their works.

R.L. Stevenson: Treasure Island, Kidnapped, The Master of Ballantrae and Catriona are the most entrancing world-famous stories. The Black Arrow (early Englanis struggles). Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. In the South Seas. Weir of Hermiston. Island Nights' Entertainments, New Arabian Nights, Virginibus Puriesque. (also autobiographical An Inland Voyage. Travels with a Donkey. Across the Plains, The Silverado Squatters and the Amateur Emigrant)

H.G. Wells – one of my early mentors (see under science fiction and also under old English classics)

Arthur Conan Doyle:  all the Sherlock Holmes mysteries. Also the Dr. Challenger stories like The Maracot Deep, The Disintegration Machine etc.

John Buchan: all the Richard Hannay spy stories (The Thirty-Nine Steps, Greenmantle, Mr. Standfast, The Three Hostages etc.), also Prester John, Glencoe and The Island of Sheep etc. Also the brilliant historical romance.

Masterman Ready  Cap'n Marrayat. Though a very patronising Christian work, it contained many authentic glimpses of what life on a real tropical island would involve.

The Adventures of Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain

Coral Island,The Fur Traders, Martin Rattler R.M. Ballantyne.

Swiss Family Robinson by Johan David Wyss

Last of the Mohicans. The Pathfinder. The Praries. The Deerslayer & The Pioneers (probably the best) J. Fenimore Cooper.

The Lonely Skier Hammond Innes: Thriller for boys.

Count of Monte Cristo. The Three Musketeers, Alexandre Duma. 

G.K. Chesterton's ethical thrillers with Father Brown, Saki's wry stories, Thornton Wilder's frivolous novels about Topper

P.G. Wodehouse: Most of the Jeeves and Wooster, the useless 'drone' Psmith, the hilarious Blandings books and his other penetrating upper-class twit stories. 

SCIENCE FICTION & FANTASY

Among the many volumes I read, some stood out:-

The Time Machine, The War of the Worlds, Food of the Gods, A Modern Utopia, The Research Magnificent, Men Like Gods, The Sleeper Awakes all by  H.G. Wells & the many brilliant collected short stories were my intro. to sci-fi & fantasy. Wells remains the greatest single originator of such ideas.

20000 Leagues under the Sea. Journey to the Centre of the Earth Jules Verne. Early fascinations.

The Hobbit. The Lord of the Rings. (Very influential!) J.R. Tolkien. Also Tree and leaf - Smith of Wootton Major - The Homecoming of Beorhtnoth  J.R. Tolkien.  

Out of the Silent Planet, Perleandra and That Hideous Strenght (etc.) C.S. Lewis's SF trilogy is unusual and ethically challenging.

Dune - Frank Herbert. The greatest single literary work in sci-fi/fantasy is the Dune epic.
Dune - Dune Messiah - Children of Dune - the first Dune trilogy is the most fascinating of them. The second Dune trilogy:
God Emperor of Dune, Heretics of Dune & Chapter House Dune keep much the same intellectual-philosophical and inventive standards. But the prequels etc. written by his son etc. are nowhere near as good. Herbert has written numerous other excellent sci-fi novels.

Timeliner by James Blish is remarkable.

Of First and Last Men  & Starliner  by Olaf Stapledon. Two brilliant, very early and influential SF novels.
 
The Illustrated Man, The Golden Apples of the Sun, Fahrenheit 451, all by Ray Bradbury. All his writings interested me once.

Philip K. Dick's semi-autobiographical sci-fi novels are interesting.

The Foundation series (about 6 volumes) by Isaac Asimov. Very inventive and intriguing! Isaac Asimov - the most productive writer on science and sci-fi ideas. Extremely imaginative projections of a human-populated universe. His sci-fi books on robotics were seminal eg. 'I, Robot' and many others in the series. No one has so fa explored the issues and problems of humanoid robots.

I have also enjoyed many of the best sci-fi authors like Arthur C. Clarke, Robert Heinlein, James Blish, Douglas Adams  etc.
(mostly before the 60s).

The hugely imaginative (but often rather scary) Ian M. Banks's sci-fi novels are most innovative, and are written by a master of suspense. Consider Philebus, The Player of Games are the ones I admired most of the half dozen I read. 

ESOTERIC BOOKS (I have read many… far too many. Here's a sample:-)

Meetings with Remarkable Men G.I.Gurdjieff (repub. London 1983) and, not least, C.S. Nott's Teachings of Gurdjieff (London 1961) - the best book about Gurdjieff.

Initiation by Elisabeth Haich - Far too imaginative and hence not credible.

Seth Speaks by Jane Roberts and five follow-up books by the same author (channelled 'wisdom' of a high standard) It  is a remarkable writing, anyhow, as also is her William James received material book. I have read about four vols. of her Seth books. I have omitted mention of all the Seth books (I even wrote reviews and corresponded with Jane Roberts and Robert Butts around 1980).others include The Nature of Personal Reality & The Nature of Mass Events as well as her William James 'received material' book. Even her novel Oversoul 7 is also well conceived.

Timeless Earth by Peter Kolosimo (Italian). Interesting speculation based on many unexplained major phenomena which indicate that human history is far longer than recognised by the sciences. Also author of Not of This World, analyses a wealth of new information about primitive societies, transoceanic voyages in primeval times, links between ancient cultures, lost civilisations etc.  It was preceded by Erich von Däniken's writings on earth mysteries, regarded as pseudo-archeology. 

Fingerprints of the Gods by Graham Hancock. Also perhaps pseudo-archeology. Studies on the Pyramids and the Sphinx along with theory that the earth's mantle has 'slipped' in the past and is due to do so again etc. Einstein gave credence to his theories. Hancock presents a map of Antartica as an ice-free continent (agrees with research of the land mass) which he claimed predates most early maps of the earth. He became fascinated with ancient Hindu and Mayan history and predictions. Probably unreliable.

The Phenomonon of Man by Pierre Teilhardt de Chardin. A paradigm of human evolution not only physical, but also cultural. Somewhat speculative but influential ideas on the evolution due to civilized culture and technology.

Psychic Discoveries Behind the Iron Curtain by Sheila Ostrander, Lynn Schroeder. Now dated, but caused a furore in the 1970s in the intelligence world because of the seeming evidence of psychic powers (such as caused Uri Geller later to be recruited by the CIA etc). Much of the contents have been discredited, especially the major claims in account of the stage magician Wolf Messing.

The Teachings of Don Juan, A Separate Reality, Journey to Ixtlan, The Eagle's Gift, Tales of Power, The Second Ring of Power, etc. Carlos Castenada:  esoteric Mexican Indian psychedelism, nature mysticism, wizerdry, witchcraft. I followed the whole development of his books with interest until the nature of his literary fraudulence was clear (Richard de Mille's Castaneda's Journey) or until his meddling or fascination with dark forces).All the Carlos Castaneda books .

The Blissful Brain (Neuroscience and proof of the power of meditation) by D. Shanida Nataraja (neurologist, University College, London) A very informative and challenging book by an expert in many forms of meditation and research into mind-altering substances.

WORLD WARS

THE FIRST WORLD WAR

The First World War - by Martin Gilbert (616 p). 1st class historical and comprehensive well-balanced account! 
The Great War (2 vols on 1st w.w. by Winston Churchill. Excellent history by a major player!  
The Memoirs of a Fox-Hunting Man - Infantry Officer etc. Sigfried Sassoon.  The great sensation-making autobiographical trilogy by a great English hero and poet. Also Sherston's Progress which describes his invalid period, perilous fame as a protester and his return to fighting.
Goodbye to All That Robert Graves' very good autobiographical account.
Vimy  Pierre Berton The Canadian force at the Battle of Vimy Ridge Bestseller. (1987, Penguin)
Undertones of War by Edmund Blunden.  His horrific experiences in trench warfare on the Western front.
The Price of Glory by Alistair Horne  (the hell of Verdun 1916)

1ST W.W.NOVELS

Under Fire Henri Barbusse. (A Frenchman's view of the trench hell)
All Quiet on the Western Front Erich Maria Remarque (Trench horrors seen from the German side) Mayflower 1963.
The Flax of Dream quartet by Henry Williamson His childhood, boyhood & youth (Dandelion Days!)and the1st W.W. The Chronicles of Ancient Light series of 10 vols. has several very good books in it, especially the volume A Test to Destruction which is extremely realistic (which finally gave me a full idea of the campaign my father went through aged just 18).  
Parade's End by Ford Maddox Ford - the most subtle and all-embracing novel of the 1st WW.
Now, God be Thanked, Heart of War, By the Green of the Spring John Masters' realistic and impressively comprehensive fictional trilogy on the 1st world war and its social environments.(1979. Sphere Books)
Riddle of the Sands by Erskine Childers (1903), a thriller, classic prelude to coming conflict with Germany.

THE SECOND WORLD WAR  

Overviews and the land campaigns
The History of the Second World War Vols. 1-6 Winston S. Churchill.
The World in Flames Collier, Richard 1940 (Penguin. 1980)
Why the Allies Won - Richard Overy,  (A summing up of the major lines. Excellent, the most definitive).
The Scourge of the Swastika Edward F. Russell (Lord Russell of Liverpool)
The Longest Day Ryan, Cornelius (Simon & Schuster, 1977) (on the most decisive and greatest invasion ever on D-Day)
Stalingrad by Anthony Beevor 1998 (acclaimed account)
D-Day - The Battle for Normandy by Anthony Beevor (2009). The definitive account with newest materials.
The Last Battle Ryan, Cornelius (1966).(the Rhine crossing, relief of Berlin, the bunker etc.)
Band of Brothers by Stephen E. Ambrose (101st Airborne from Normandy to Hitler's Eagle's Nest)
Citizen Soldiers by Stephen E. Ambrose (US servicemen - the Normandy to Berlin campaign)
Once there was a War by John Steinbeck, John  (1958) (his actual communiques as war reporter).
Eastern Approaches by Fitzroy Maclean Acclaimed account as a diplomat in the USSR (during the Stalin trials) and his undercover action in WWII. Highly acclaimed writing.
Between Tears and Laughter  by Lin Yutang (A 1943 Chinese outlook, written in U.S., on the 2nd W.W. and Western mentality. Very perceptive
A Full Life Brian Horrocks (1960) Brilliant general under Montgomery.
Letters Home: a war memoir. (1993) John C. Ausland. Europe 2nd W.W.
The Nightmare by C.S. Forester (recreation of the Third Reich culture)
Operation Sealion by Peter Fleming (complete research on Hitler's planned but abandoned invasion of England in 1940)
Blood, Tears and Folly by Len Deighton Masterly coverage of the meaninglessness but necessity of WWII,
Blitzkrieg by Len Deighton  (1979).
The Goebbels Diaries - The Last Days ed- Hugh Trevor-Roper (very revealing of this unscrupulous Hitlerite propagandist)
The Desert War and Eclipse by Alan Moorhead (Eye-witness account of N. Africa conflict up until fall of Nazi Germany)
The Berlin Diaries of Marie ‘Missie’ Vassiltchikov – 1940-1945 (The Third Reich from the inside by an aristocratic girl who became involved in the July 16 plot on the life of Hitler. A harrowing tale of living under carpet-bombing, the horrors of Nazi rule and the huge and most brutal of purges by the Gestapo and SS of the plotters and their relatives and Missie’s struggle for survival as the Reich was overrun by the Russians and the other Allies. A major record of courage and “a historical document of the first importance” according to A.J.P. Taylor).

Air War
Their Finest Hour Vol. 2 of Churchill's History of 2nd W.W.

Eagle Day - Richard Collier (Hodder & Stoughton. 1966) The whole story of the desperate six weeks air battles either side of 13th August 1940. Over 400 eye-witness accounts from Allied and German sources.(1966 Hodder & Stoughton. Pan in 1968.)

Fighter - The True Story of the Battle of Britain. by Len Deighton (1977 & Panther 1979). with an intro. by A.J.P. Taylor.(Very illumining!)

The Luftwaffe Diaries by Cajus Bekker (1964) inside account of the history of German fighter and bomber forces in WWII
Bomber by Len Deighton - deeply researched novel of both R.A.F.Bomber Command and its victims in Germany.
The Big Show Pierre Clostermann Perhaps the most exciting of all 2nd WW fighter war accounts.(1951. Chatto & Windus)
Flames in the Sky  Further accounts. Pierre Closterman 
Reach for the Sky  Paul Brickhill's stirring biography of the fighter ace Douglas Bader (1954. Collins)
The Last Enemy - Richard Hilary (one of the very best, deepest R.A.F. fighter pilot's biographical accounts: 1947 but republished in 1997)
Wing Leader James Edgar Johnsen (the British fighter pilot with highest score. Became Wing Commander)
Nine Lives Alan C. Deere's autobiography (Battle of Britain fighter pilot). About the most extraordinary air achievement and luck.
The Dam Busters Paul Brickhill - story of Guy Gibson V.C. and his dam-buster squadron using Barnes Wallis' bouncing bomb.
The Giant Killers by Kenneth Poolman (fighters catapulted from merchant ships etc. in the Battle of the Atlantic)
Battle Order 204 by Christobel Mattingley. An RAF bomber pilot's experiences
Biggin Hill

The Sea War
Raiders from the Sea by Kontra-Admiral Lepotier (seaborne commando raids in WWII)
Pacific Onslaught by Paul Kennedy (7the Dec. 1941 to 7th Feb. 1943)
The Greatest Gamble Per Hansson 1967 (The Shetland crossings)
The Shetland Bus by David Howarth (The Shetland crossings)
Shetlands-Larsen Frithjof Sælen On the hero of the Shetland crossings. (Oslo 1982)
Hunting the Bismarck by C.S. Forester (Michael Joseph Ltd. 1959). gripping, true account.
The Cockleshell Heroes - C.E.Lucas Phillips. (Pan rpt.1970) 
Exchange Ship Max Hill -how Americans caught by the outbreak of war in Japan were finally let out by ship.

Resistance & Secret War
The American Magic by Ronald Lewin (Hutchinson 1982)
The Game of the Foxes  by Farago, Ladislas (N.Y. 1971) on German espionage in U.K. and the U.S.A. 2nd WW.
The Double Cross System by Sir John Masterman, (On his part in Major Galveston's strategic deception which saved the Allies).
Operation Cicero by C. Moyzisch (German Espionage in Ankara by  unscrupulous Franz von Papen)
The Counterfeit Traitor Klein, Alexander  (U.S.A. 1958) (Swedish-American oil expert in Germany posing as a Nazi for the Allies. Complete inside picture of Axis oil resources etc. by infiltration up to Himmler)
Codename Tricycle by Russel Miller (most daring, successful Yugoslav Dusko Popov as British double agent)
Spy Counterspy by Dusko Popov (autobiography)
Spy in the U.S. by Pawal Menat and John Dille (A Communist agent spying in the U.S. during WWII)
Behind the Lines (the oral history of special operations in WWII) by Russell Miller (very special direct accounts - such bravery!)
Practice to Deceive  Mure, David  (Kimber. London 1977) 
A Man Called Intrepid  by William Stevenson (Harcourt-Brace 1976).(on Sir William Stevenson, Churchill's 'go-between' to Roosevelt, Enigma boss & central figure in overall Allied intelligence. A major source book).
The Next Moon by André Hue clandestine fighters dropped in France before D-Day to harass the enemy communications and panzers. The horrors of Nazi killing of French resistance and all others around them. 
The Secret Forces of World War II  by Philip Warner (Granada London. 1985)
The White Rabbit by Bruce Marshall (1952 & Pan 1954). Account of Wing Co. Yeo-Thomas' work as top secret agent organising French resistance. His capture by Gestapo & escape from Buchenwald.
Popski's Private Army Lt. Col. Vladimir Peniakoff. 1950. Deep penetration battalion fighting behind Axis lines from Alamein to N. Italy until capitulation. Very educative about warfare psychology & battle etc.
Fighting with Popski's Pivate Army  by Pak Yunnie
The Man Who Never Was by Montagu.  A deception to cloak the allied Landings in Sicily. (Penguin 1956) 
The Bedford Triangle by Martin W. Bowman (US undercover ops from England WWII)
They Have their Exits by Airey Neave - escapers in WWII by a heroic English escaper
Saturday at M.I.9 by Airey Neave
Very Special Intelligence (The Admiralty's Special Intelligence centre operations) by Patrick Beesly
Secret Intelligence in the 20th Century by Constaine Fitzgibbon (high spots of 75 years of spying)
Rapport fra "Nr. 24" by Gunnar Sønsterberg
Of Spies and Stratagems by Stanley Lovell (on OSS operations during WWII)
The Nazi Connection by F.W. Winterbotham (major spy inside Hitler's Reich)
London Svarer Ikke by Sverre Midtskau (1968) Norwegian intelligence officer who parachuted into Norway etc.
Spion i Hitler's Rike by Sverre Bergh & Svein Sæter (Bergh's double life as student and agent)
Undercover Patrick Howarth (1980) The men and women of the S.O.E. (Special Operations Executive)

Escape:-
The Escaping Club  by A.J. Evans (1922) Seminal work on escaping which inspired future escape organizations.
The Colditz Story (1952) & The Latter Days at Colditz (1953) by P.R. Reid. MBE. MC.The gripping saga of the most secure castle prison & the best escapers ever. Inspiring & amusing too.
Wingless Victory Anthony Richardson (Oldham's Press. 1950) The story of Sir Basil Embry's escape from occupied France, summer 1940.
Odette - story of the courage of the French resistance herione.
Dare To Be Free by W.B. Sandy Thomas (true escape drama in Greece (Mount Athos)
Boldness be my Friend  Richard Pape (his own amazing but possibly fake escape saga)
The Wooden Horse - Eric Williams (the Stalag Luft 3 escape classic)
The Great Escape - Paul Brickhill (the biggest POW RAF escape)
Escape to Danger- Paul Brickhill (Collection of amazing escapes)
The Tunnel - Eric Williams
M19 - Escape and Evasion 1939-1945 by M.R.D. Foot & J.M. Langley

Diverse, incl. biography/memoirs:-

The Young Lions by Irwin Shaw, an excellent novel on the fortunes and fate of young Germans in Hitler's forces.
Scum of the Earth  Arthur Koestler. All the sordid facts about France before & during the fall in 1940. Brilliant!
Boy in the Blitz Colin Perry. A moving and detailed personal 1940 diary by a school-leaving boy.(1972)
Signal Venture Lionel Herbert Harris. A biography of a Signal's officer throught both wars - unusual angle on war.
Is Paris Burning? Collins, Larry (1985)
Combat - European Theater Congdon, Don   (Dell. 1958)
A Genius for War: a Life of General George Patton D'Este, Carlo(1995)
Crusade in Europe  Eisenhower, Gen. Dwight D. (1948) (war memoir)
The Battle of the Bulge  Merriam, Robert E. (Ballantine 1957)
Memoirs 1940-1945 Field Marshal Earl Alexander of Tunis
Memoirs  Montgomery of Alamein (1958).From Alamein to Berlin. Excellent & illumining about Allied conflict on the war in Europe)
From Alamein to Zem-Zem Keith Douglas. Evocative blow-by-blow diary account of desert tank warfare in Monty's 8th Army by a tank commander who was killed in battle(1979 Oxford Univ. Press)
"I was an Eighth Army Soldier" by Driver R.J. Crawford, as narrated to Major John Dalgleish. (1944. Victor Gollancz)
If you survive George Wilson. Gripping true account by an US officer at Normandy, Battle of the Bulge etc.(1987, Ivy Books. NY)
When the Snow Comes they will Take You Away (first publ. as Love and war in the Apennines) Eric Newby's wartime experiences as an escapee in Italy where he was helped by his future wife, a remarkable portrait of the Italian peasantry in wartime).
Ill Met By Moonlight  On the invasion of Crete. (Major Patrick Leigh Fermour's undercover operation) by W.Stanley. Moss (Sphere 1968)
Jersey under the Jackboot R.C.F. Maugham C.B.E. (1968. Corgi)
Raid On St.Nazaire, David Mason. (Macdonald 1970)
Churchill's Bodyguard  Edmund Murray. (Star 1988) 
The Last Escape by John Nichol & Tony Rennell (Allied POWs forced marches in 1944-5)
The Story of Ernie Pyle by Lee G. Miller (life of America's most famous and popular war correspondent WWII)
G.I. Joe by Ernie Pyle (1942)
Captain Retread by Donald Hough (US officer from WWI recomissioned for service with troops as home)
A Woman in Berlin by Anonymous (shocking history of Russian rape and violence in Berlin)

Adolphology:-
The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich  William Shirer (1964).
Inside the Third Reich Speer, Albert (Macmillan 1970)
The Last Days of Hitler  Trevor-Roper, Hugh 
Hitler's War Directives  1939-1945 (as they were originally issued) by Hugh R. Trevor-Roper
The Spear of Destiny Trevor Ravenstone. (On Hitler's obtaining, as result of Austrian Anschluss, the spear which pierced Jesus, had been owned by Barbarossa etc. & his pseudo-mysticism by one who knew him in Vienna & who advised Churchill on Hitler's personality etc.)
The Fatal Decisions by several top German generals after the war 
The Secret Conversations of Hitler (recorded by Martin Bormann & edited by Trevor-Roper)
The Other Side of the Hill ed. B. Liddell Hart. Hitler's War as seen by some of his top generals after the defeat.
Hitler's Terror Weapons by Roy Irons (authoritative on how they were planned, developed, used and partly foiled)
The Hitler Book (secret report by two of his closest aides) ed. Richard Overy 
Hitler's Young Tigers by Rupert Butler factual history
The Jackals of the Reich by Ronald Seth (Hitler' Corps of British deserters)
For Volk and Führer Robert Leibbrandt and Operation Weissdorn by Hans Strydom (Nazism in South Africa up to WWII)

Far East War:- 
 Elephant Bill James H. Williams (the battles of Burma, with the use of elephants).
The Jungle is Neutral  F. Spencer Chapman
Empire of the Sun J.G. Ballard. The famous author's 'autobiographical novel' of his boyhood in Shanghai's Changi P.O.W. camp.
Jungle Soldier Bryan Moynahan 
Defeat into Victory by Field-Marshal Slim is a brilliant and inspiring account of the war in Burma
The Life of a Burma Surgeon by Gordon Seagrave is also an eye-opener.
White Coolies by great heroine Betty Jeffrey tell how the Japanese treated women prisoners
Combat Command by Fredrick C- Sherman (Struggle for the Pacific WWII)
Springboard to Victory by C.E. Lucas Phillips (the battle for Kohima, Burma)

2ND W.W.NOVELS 

Destination Chungking Han Suyin Classic on the Japanese invasion of China. (1942 Jonathan Cape.1959- Penguin)

The Sword of Honour trilogy comprising: Officers and Gentlemen (1951) Men at Arms (1952)  Unconditional Surrender (1955) - Evelyn Waugh's series of 'autobiographical novels' from the invasion of Crete and much more.Very authentic and much understated humour. Chapman & Hall, but all in Penguin

The Winds of War (1971) and War and Remembrance (1978) by Herman Wouk true to history and esp. Jewish angle. Massive work.(Fontana-Collins)

City of Gold Len Deighton (1992) Brilliant novel of desert war counter-intelligence in Egypt)
Winter Len Deighton a deep historical novel on Germany from 1900 to 1945  
Goodbye Mickey Mouse – by Len Deighton. Top researched novel about Mustang fighter base in East Anglia during 2nd WW. 
The Purple Plain, The Jacaranda Tree & Fair Stood the Wind for France - H.E. Bates' war novels, all realistic. 

Quiet Flows the Don  Sholokov. Major, long novel of the Russian defence of Stalingrad & the subsequent mightiest Kursk tank war.

The Forgotten Soldier Guy Sajer (560 pages. Sphere Books, 1971) International best seller on war from the viewpoint of an ordinary Wehrmacht soldier on the Eastern Front. Chilling, illumining... the why and how of what the foot soldier just had no knowledge about)

The Pied Piper Nevile Shute. A man fleeing the Nazis after Dunkirk is followed by refugee waifs who he cares for and saves.
Requiem for a Wren (Shute - 1955 William Clowes & Son) Pastoral on WWII RAF, Most Secret  WWII Royal Navy (development of napalm). What Happened to the Corbets  (the bombing of Portsmouth).

Destination Dieppe W. Howard Baker Mediocre novel about intelligence in France around the Dieppe raid.(Zenith Publ. London.) 
Green Beach by James Leasor (mission to steal advanced German radar near Dieppe)

Dark Star by Alan Furst. Brilliant novel on espionage in the late 30s. 
The Polish Officer  Alan Furst. About a Polish underground agent in France (Harper-Collins. 1995). Mission to Paris Alan Furst. On counter-espionage after the fall of Paris, and The Spies of Warsaw.

Sowers of the Wind T.A.G. Hungerford. Realistic novel of occupation in Japan after Hiroshima (1967. Angus & Robertson. UK)

The Three Bamboos by Robert Standish - almost forgotten story about the rise of Japan through the eyes of a major family - published in 1940 before Pearl Harbour. A most insightful and prescient look at the pre-war Japanese personality and the rise of Bushido. Exciting story, the Americans should have taken it seriously and they would have been prepared..

Taxi to Tobruk by Rene Havard (1962) trans. from French (also a film) A journey across 400 miles of desert in a taxi in wartime.

Battle Cry by Leon Uris (novel on the U.S. Marines fighting in the Pacific)

Call it Treason by George Howe (filmed as 'Decision before Dawn')

THE COLD WAR

At least until 1990, novelists were truer to life than factual writers on the Cold War because of the secrecy/security clamp-down. 
Nigel West was perhaps the most informed writer who challenged the establishment secrecy most effectively.
Too Secret too Long is Chapman Pincher's very extensive summing-up of the British spies, a blockbusting research that finally discredited British intelligence from before 1940 to after 1980 almost totally!
Spy Catcher by Peter Wright, which caused the furore in Thatcher's Britain, supports this but has actually been proven mistaken in it's main contention.
My Silent War by Kim Philby (1968) is his account - doubtless censored by the KGB.
The Falcon and the Snowman by Robert Lindsey (US coding technicians trapped into becoming spies for USSR)
KGB The Secret Work of Soviet Agents by John Barron. (Major work on KGB persons, operations etc.)

COLD WAR NOVELS

John Le Carré, Len Deighton, Frederik Forsythe and Ted Allbeury were of the very best Cold War novelists in U.K. (but I rather loathe the obligatory sex and violence all these otherwise extremely gifted and massively informed thriller writers indulge in). 

The Odessa File - The Dogs of War - The Fourth Protocol and all Frederick Forsythe's Cold War spy novels. Always gripping and extremely well-informed.

John Le Carré: The Spy Who Came in from the Cold - The Looking Glass War - A Small Town in Germany - Tinker, Tailor Soldier, Spy - The Honourable Schoolboy - Smiley's People -  The Quest for Karla - A Perfect Spy - The Russia House - The Secret Pilgrim - and more still. 

All Len Deighton' Cold War spy novels are very well-researched & excellently written. Len Deighton in truly enthralling. There are many masters of suspense and local colour in the spy genre, but few who are so convincing because of their knowledge of the historical realities. Yet only a select few can reach into the subtleties of the mind and contrive such phenomenal networks of credible and in-depth characters who are both recognisable in our own lives but who interact in ways wholly unthought of by those of us without espionage and deception experience. The subtlety and economical meanness of his ironic humour is unsurpassed in the genre... though the inspiration it has given both to some contemporaries and many successful follow-on authors is to be recognised. His first several novels have these qualities in fresh intensity, though the Sampson agon is somehow mellower, but no less intriguing and confounding.
The Ipcress File - Horse Under Water - Funeral in Berlin - An Expensive Place to Die, - Billion Dollar Brain - Twinkle, Twinkle Little Spy - An Expensive Place to Die - Only when I Larf - Yesterday's Spy - Spy Story - XPD - and SS-GB Len Deighton's imaginative novel of Britain as it might have been under Nazi rule. 
Also by Deighton also wrote three major trilogies 1) Game, Set and Match, 2) Hook, Line, Sinker and  3) Faith, Hope, Charity which form a series covering the development of Cold War espionage using fictional characters in exciting cliffhangers of high quality all based on thorough knowledge of the times, places and events. 

Beyond the Silence - The Only Good German – The Lantern Network – The Other Side of Silence - The Secret Whispers - All Our Tomorrows  and many more by Ted Allbeury. About the intelligence underground in occupied France.(199? Hodder & Stoughton). All very true-to-life, suspense-ridden and  imaginative fictional war and cold war stories - the most perceptive writer of well-informed and ethical spy fiction after Le Carré and Deighton. I have at least 20 titles, all engaging reads.

INDIAN HISTORY and other informatiom

Glimpses of World History  (History of India Vol 1.) by Jawaharlal Nehru.  London, Drummond [1949)
 A History of India. Michael Edwards. London, 1961
 The Last Years of British India Michael Edwards (Cassell. London 1963)
 We Are Not The First Andrew Tomas, 1972.

The Men who Ruled India Philip Woodruff Vol1 The Founders Vol2 The Guardians 

Portrait of India by Ved Mehta also Mahatma Gandhi and His Apostles
 Autobiography of an Unknown Indian - Part One and Two Jaico books, 1964 (& Macmillan, London 1951) . by Nirad C. Chaudhuri. These two huge volumes are a great tour de force covering Indian life, social change and politics in the 20th century up until Independence in 1947. Part One (570 pages) is the most learned, brilliant, challenging, and controversial book to come out of India relating to that period. A book with some of the most compelling descriptions of life under the Raj (Sirkar) in Calcutta and Bengalese villages. The author was a polymath whose breadth of intellect and historical knowledge (and languages, especially European, including ancient Greek, Latin and French) was breathtaking. He explained the ins and outs of Indian thought and behaviour through the decline of British rule and afterwards. He was the most penetrating exposer of Indian foibles and corruption, eventually moving to England after middle age and becoming an Honorary Ph.D at Oxford and and MBE. He live to 100 years of age. His books are all most insightful about India and human kind. 
Part two – Thy Hand, Great Anarch (979 pages) is a many-sided autobiographical account of aspects of his unusual life and times – not least including his direct inside knowledge of the Gandhi movement, Bengali politics and Subhas Bose. He lifts the lid on the classes of people who shaped Independence and became the rulers of India.

The Continent of Circe, Nirad C. Chaudhuri. Jaico, India 1965. History and strong critique of Hindu Indian origins, culture, way of life and politics. This is an unadulterated account fo Indian culture, history and politics, hence highly controversial in India. The Continent of Circe woke me quite rudely from my somewhat romantic illusions about Indian life and times, and its varied and warring population. He was a prophet without honour in his own country - an unforgiving Hindu nation.

Three Horsemen of the New Apocalypse (Oxford 1999) Nirad Chaudhuri's theory of the ultimate decline of Western influence in the world. His swan song, but rather out of touch and not as convincing as most of his other writings. 

Hobson-Jobson 1886  Yule & Burnell. The ultimate dictionary of 'pidgin english'

Gods, Sages and Kings: Vedic Secrets of Ancient Civilization by David Frawley (the first Westerner to become a genuine Indian sastri). Attempted proof of the date of the composition of the Vedas on astrological evidence plus new archaeological evidence on the Sarasvati River and interpretation of Vedic texts. The proof is complicated and tenuous. Being a Hindu shastri, Frawley is not unpartisan but aims to instate the Vedas as a teaching.
 Hindu Civilisation Dr, Radha Kumud Mookerji. (Bharatiya Vidya Bhavan, Bombay. 1989)
 The Men Who Ruled India - Vol. 1 & 2.  Philip Woodruff (Jonathan Cape, London. 1953-4)
 Freedom at Midnight Larry Collins & Dominique LaPierre. (London : Collins, 1975). A wide-ranging and essentially well-founded account of the run-up to Partition and Independence.
 Portrait of India  Ved Mehta (Weidenfeldt & Nicholson, 1970)

The Sword of Tipu Sultan by Bhagwan S. Gidwani (research-based reconstruction novel)

India Trevor Fishlock (1986?) A general and well-informed overview of India, its population, challenges, politics and problems, especially for the foreigner without direct access to the Indian world.

India, A Wounded Civilization by V.S. Naipaul and India - a million mutinies now by V.S. Naipaul

No full stops in India and The Heart of India by Mark Tulley. A Western journalist’s experiences and views of India. Rather politically correct instead of very illumining, but amusing and lively sketches of Indians and their lives.

The Siege of Krishnapur by J.G. Farrell

Dando on Delhi Ridge by Willian Clive (The Sepoy rebellion and the battle for Delhi in 1857. Seen from the British angle)

Books on India , Travel , Memoirs, Biography, good novels etc.

Living with the Himalayan Masters Swami Rama. (penned by Swami Ajaya) Marvellous tale but rather incredible.

Krishnamurthi Vol. 1. The Years of Awakening & 2. The Years of Fulfilment. by Mary Lutyens (Avon Books 1975). Authoritative and excellently researched and written. Quite a story.

From the Caves and Jungles of Hindostan. Madame Blavatsky's best-known popular book which caused a sensation in the West when it first appeared.  Part auto-biog, part 'artist's license' and admitted to include sheer invention... but still a most varied and entrancing story of a ‘spiritual trip’. The influence she had on Western religionists was seminal, and the Theosophical Society and subsequently many New Age ideas rest much on her ideas, as derived from India.
 Blavatsky and Her Teachers by Jean Overton Fuller. 1988 East-West Publications (can get it from Samuel Weiser Inc.). This is authoritative... as far as research can reach into the unknown aspects of Blavatsky’s life. Not one-sided and fascinating. It does not avoid the controversies about her alleged faked ‘miracles’. 
She also wrote a (now rare) book called The Lives of Alcyon, which purported to be an account derived by her wandering in the spiritual akasha of the many reincarnation of Jesus, ending with Maitreya (later identified by Theosophists as Jiddu Krishnamurti, who caused a hiatus when he denied that any such thing was so).

Godan by Munshi Premchand Hindi classic (1936) on peasant India - novel giving vivid picture of rural India and inhabitants

To Be Young by Mary Lutyens Edwardian lady in India, became a theosphist when young, fell in love with Jiddu Krishnamurti. Searingly perceptive.

City of Djinns - a year in Delhi by William Darymple. Excellent, it is very true to lndian life - both comic and tragic (the demise of Delhi & its greatness). 

Bengal Lancer and Lancer at Large are very good accounts of experiences of F. Yeats Brown, firstly as a soldier with spiritual leanings, secondly as a journalistic visitor to India with spiritual interests when retired.

Slowly Down the Ganges by the travel writer Eric Newby is typical Brit grit and humour combined with Indian exotica and aggravations galore. A Short Walk in the Hindu Kush is similar.

Carpet Sahib biography of Jim Corbett by Martin Booth

Jim Corbett My India (his most charming book), Man-Eaters of Kumaon,The Temple Tiger, The Man-eating Leopard of Rudraprayag are truly insightful accounts of Corbett's work in protecting rural inhabitants from man-eaters.

The Hill of Devi & by E.M. Forster - memoirs of being a secretary to a brilliant and ecstatic-devotional Maharaj in the tiny and impossibly topsy-turvy State of Dewas in the 1920's. 
A Passage to India was his undoubted classic reflecting the cultural difficulties of relations between the British and the Indians.

Household Gods by Jon Thurley (evocative and piercing novel about Brit during the Partition, assassination of Gandhi etc.

The Home and the World by Rabindranath Tagore 

Hindoo Holiday by Ackroyd (on the same Maharaja as Forster visited)

Plain Tales from the Raj ed. C. Alleen. Accounts written by former Indian civil servants, Army people and other former British residents.

Miss Fane in India ed. John Pemble (from a Victorian lady's Indian diary)

The Anglo-Indians  by Alice Perrin (1912) From the life pre-1900 of an English lady in India

An Indian Day by Edward Thompson. (1927)  Very perceptive descriptions of Indian life by an English aficionado.

The Nightrunners of Bengal (about the Mutiny),The Deceivers (about the discovery of the Thugee secret society) The Lotus and the Wind (a drama about undercover army work in India) The Ravi Lancers, Bhowani Junction (about the final days of the British in leaving India) all by John Masters. Bugles and a Tiger John Masters' autobiography.

The Jewel in the Crown, The Day of the Scorpion, The Towers of Silence, A Division of the Spoils  (quartet) by  Paul Scott  (On how the British behaved in th run up to Independence and the consequences of thir hasty retreat)

Clear Light of Day, Games at Twilight, Anita Desai

Heat and Dust, How I became a Holy Mother, Out of India, To Whom She Will by Ruth Prawer Jhabvala 

A Tiger for Malgudi my favourite and most amusing R.K. Narayen book, and Swami and Friends the most nostalgic - I've read all of them. ('Malgudi is his imaginary mixture of Mysore & Bangalore with excursions around).

The Far Pavilions by M.M. Kaye is old India and N.W. Frontier romance - imaginative, gripping and based on facts. (Her autobiog.1st vol. The Sun in the Morning is colourful, perceptive and very nostalgic - about growing up in India.).

He who Rides a Tiger by Bhabani Battacharya  1960.  Illumining novel about peon in direct poverty who goes to a town and starts a lingam worship (by fraud) and rises to riches and renown, until the scam is exposed.

An Indian Attachment  by Sarah Lloyd  Personal account of the pleasures and pains of a foreigner living in rural India.

Calcutta - the city revealed Geoffrey Moorhouse (1971) Travel and research. 

The Headman of Little Hill by K. Shivarama Karanth (1977) The life of the original peoples of India, now minority living traditionally

Shantaram by William Gregory Roberts.  Major novel by former Australian bank robber who fled to India with nothing and rose through the slums to the top of the Mumbai mafia. Largely autobiographical. No foreigner has penetrated so far into the secret underworld of India (while Indians have not written much about such unsavoury things in English, at any rate).

Sacred Games by Vikram Chandra. Realistic major novel about Indian police life written by an Indian resident in the USA. 

Full Tilt  Devla Murphy (bicycle ride from Dunkirk to Delhi)

Notturno Indiano (Indian night) by Antonio Tabucci 

Elephant Walk by Robert Standish (also a good film with Liz Taylor) On elephant problem in Sri Lanka

INDIA: BOOKS CONCERNING INDIAN RELIGION AND SPIRITUALITY

The Life of Ramakrishna & The Life of Vivekananda Romain Rolland (1929 - Advaita Ashrama 1970). Two books which brought the story of the lives and works of these two revered Indian spiritual figures to the West.

The Gospel of Ramakrishna : trans. Swami Nikilananda 1924. Advaita Ashrama: Talks of Ramakrishna recorded verbatim by 'M'. The definitive source book on Ramakrishna.
Holy Mother Swami Nikhilananda (1962. N.Y. pub. Ramakrishna-Vivekananda Center. The life of Sri Sarada Devi, wife of Ramakrishna and helpmate in his mission)
 Swami Vivekananda in East and West"(1968) Ramakrishna Vedanta Centre U.K. Unity House, Blind Lane, Bourne End. Bucks. SL8 5LG. (11 essays on Vivekananda, his work and following) "Raja Yoga" Swami Vivekananda (ca. 1900)

Srimad Bhagavatam - translated by the renowned Indian journalist, N. Raghunathan Recommended as the best and most lucid English version of this ancient Indian classic of unknown authorship by VKN (pupil of the author) 

My Guru and His Disciple by Christopher Isherwood. (Magnum Books U.K. 1981 - also pub. in US). Disarming, amusing, perceptive and great on the guru-disciple relationship. The issue of homosexuality and spirituality is confronted head on here.

The Song of God - Bhagavad-Gita trans. Swami Prabhavananda & C. Isherwood. 1944 - The Vedanta Society.

Vedanta for the Western World (1948) Essays by Vedantists east & west: Sri Chaitanya, Prabhavananda, Isherwood, Huxley, Heard. An intelligent selection of writings on the Vedantic traditions, especially by famous Western followers. 

The Traditional Life of Sri Sankaracharya Madgava-Vidyaranya (Pub. Sri Ramakrishna Math. Madras). The only source text on the life of Shankara's amazing life story and achievements.

Life of Sri Ramanuja Swami Ramakrishnanda (1959 - Ramakrishna Math). Interesting proponent of a theory of vishtadvaita (qualified monism) – a mix of devotion and truth-seeking.

Life of Sai Baba (Shirdi saint) by H.H. Narasimha Swamiji. 3 vols. Madras (reissue 1990). Almost unattainable volumes these days. A very full set of account – part of the original hagiography of this ‘saint’.

Shri Sai Satcharita of The Wonderful Life and Teachings of Shri Sai Baba by Hemadpant. ca . 1918 (reissues: Shirdi Sanasthan Pub.) 
The Life and Teachings of Sai Baba of Shirdi (1993 State Univ. of New York) Antonio Rigopoulos. The definitive and most complete work on Shirdi Sai Baba, exact correlation of available sources. Believe only what you cannot doubt!

Sai Baba: The Saint of Shirdi Mani Sahukar (1971 Bombay). Brief book on his life and sayings.

The Incredible Sai Baba Arthur Osborne (1957 Rider & Co.) A short popular book presenting Shirdi Sai's life, miracles and teachings.

Ramana Maharshi Arthur Osborne (1970) Biography of the sage's life.
Born 1am. at Tiruchuzhi in Tamil Nadu/South India during Aruda darsan on 30/12/1879. Died 8.47 pm. 14/4/1950. An uneducated recluse, who nonetheless eventually attracted countless visitors. He is life exemplifies how belief in an entirely speculative and highly superstitious religious doctrine can lead a person into going to the extreme lengths of isolation and self-denigration while observing silence for many years of sitting and praying, saying mantras and the like, eventually impressing others to revere him and induce him into offering 'teachings', which were entirely unoriginal and traditional unworldly idea typifying advaitic Hinduism (negation of the world). Having become known through the  controversial writer, Paul Brunton (who later dissociated himself from Maharshi) , he did not add the remotest knowledge or inspire and usefulness to the human enterprise. 

Mahayogi: Life, Sadhana & Teachings of Sri Aurobindo Born 4.50 am. 15/8/1872 at Calcutta, Died 5/121950. at 1.26 am. Allegedly no decay in body for 111 hours (one wonders whether the examination was state-of-the-art). Chief landmark in life the 'Day of Victory' on 24/11/1926 when Aurobindo announced the coming down of the Supermind to earth-consciousness, whereupon Aurobindo withdrew into silence for the rest of his life. This date happens to be the day after the alleged  birth of Sathya Sai Baba -  disputed due to public records which differ by about three years. R.R. Diwakar (1988 - Bharatiya Vidya Bhavan. Bombay)

Maharaj T.S. Ananda Murthy (1972 - pub. Dawn Horse Press/ San Rafael. Ca. USA) (A biography of Shriman Tapasviji Maharaj, the Mahatma who lived for 185 years and carried out the most demanding tapas in modern times and who reputedly revived his body physically completely by Kaya-kalpa yoga twice in his life. This is another story which cannot be confirmed by any reliable independent sources. Born on a Thursday, probably in March in the year 1770. Died 12/10/1955).

The Autobiography of Dayanand Saraswati (b. 1824-d. '83) ed. K.C. Yadav (1976). Lively account by the mysterious godman, founder of the Arya Samaj and first new champion of Vedic culture & emancipation from superstitions and repressions. 

Dayananda Sarasvati: His Life & Ideas"J.T.F. Jordans. (1978) Oxford Univ. Press, India. Sound research work. Saraswati was a down-to-earth person who wished to rid India of obscurantism and myth and to re-establish the best values of the sanathana dharma.

Swami Shraddhananda: His Life & Causes J.T.F. Jordans (1981) Oxford Univ. Press, India) The successor of Dayananda Sarasvati in the Arya Samaj. Another reasonable and self-sacrificing person whose life was a struggle to bring people out of superstitious nonsense. 
Saints and Sages of India G.R. Sholapurkar (1980s Bharatiya Vidya Society. Adr. 1-U.B. Jawahamagar, Bungalow Rd. Delhi - 110007). Compendium-type book.

Stories of Indian Saints by J.E. Abbott & Pandit N.R. Godbole (1933 - reprint 1988 Motilal Banarsidas/Delhi). Typically Indian writing: archaic, quaint and much of it literally too incredible.

Modern Saints and Mystics A.N. Sharma (1982. Divine Life Society. Sivanandanagar). Compendium-type book. A compendium which recounts the alleged facts about a number of supposed Indian ‘saints’.

A Search in Secret India - the sequel to A Search in Secret Egypt - is a fascinating account from the 1930s of Paul Brunton's wanderings. How can one be sure this is all true, though? It seems to be an interpretation of experiences based on the same kind of over-heated imagination as caused one of his insider ‘disciples’ to debunk him in later years (Geoffrey Masson).
"A Hermit in the Himalayas". Brunton's lively account of daily experiences and unusual meetings while sojourning there in the 1930's. It is Brunton’s clearly written and well-presented spiritual-philosophical books, esp. "The Wisdom of the Overself" and his many posthumous notebooks which are his most serious output, his ideas on ‘mentalism’ being argued on the basis of Hindu spiritual teachings and ‘philosophy’.
 Perspectives by Paul Brunton: volume of excerpts from the 16-volume series of posthumously-published writings. "The Notebooks of Paul Brunton."  New York 1987.(1'st published 1984). PFPB/Larson Publications. 4936 Route 414. Burdett, New York 14818. 
Dr. Paul Brunton has been charged with not actually being a Dr. and also having very wild and bogus ideas, by Geoffrey Masson, who grew up under his influence (due to Masson’s father).
 
Living with the Himalayan Masters"Swami Rama. (penned by Swami Ajaya: Too incredible life of a ‘saint’. (Born 1925 - ) He stated on p. 27, "As a child I clearly remembered details of my past life" He started the Himalayan International Institute of Yoga Science and Philosophy of the U.S.A. in 1971 in Honesdale, Pennsylvania. adr: RRI Box 400. Honesdale Pa. 18431). The ‘stories’ are ‘beyond belief’ (which phrase is much abused but means what it says).

Shri Shri Shri Shivabalayogi Maharaj Lt. Gen. Hanut Singh. pub. Bangalore 1980s) I met Balayogi on two occasions and he was another of those inscrutable but impressive figures with a life story that could only have occurred in India!

Play of Consciousness Swami Muktananda (1971 - SYDA Foundation. New York. This is an impelling autobiography of a person – not least of his struggle with sexual passions – who gained an international following through his supposed ‘shaktipat’ (awakening divine touch) but who was later also widely and credibly accused of sexual abuses.

From Man to God-man N. Ananthanarayanan (1970 - India) (The inspiring life story of the famous Swami Shivananda (not born an Indian) who settled in Rishikesh and started the Divine Life Society/Advaita Ashrama). This was a selfless server of mankind, one whose public persona was rational but about whom many almost surreal stories circulate (not least through the writings of his more famous admirer, Mircea Eliade).

For Seekers of God Mahapurush Swami Shivananda (1975 - Advaita Ashrama) (Spiritual talks by Ramakrishna Math leader: translated). A very common and intellectually primitive kind of devotional Indian teaching. Nothing original. 

The Hindus An Alternative History  by Wendy Doniger  Serious, accurate analytic historical survey.

A Man of God A biography of Mahapurush Swami Shivananda. Advaita Ashrama. 5, Delhi Entally Rd. Calcutta 14.

The Path Beyond Sorrow  Swami Chidananda (1991 - Divine Light Society - Rishikesh: standard kind of Hindu teaching. 
The Autobiography of a Yogi (1946) by Paramahamsa Yogananda. Perhaps the best-known books in the West on Indian mystics and other spiritual figures of his time. One has to wonder how much of it is sheer invention, though.

Man's Eternal Quest (1975) by Paramahamsa Yogananda. Reading this aloud together may help some people remove the dullness of sluggish conventional religion. Some interesting variants on old ideas, but some views rather overdone.

Babaji & the 18 Siddha Kriya Yoga Tradition M. Govindan (1991 Montreal: a presentation of an alleged extremely ancient tradition of very long-lived gurus ending in Babaji, having lived in ancient Sri Lanka when it was still a continent above water etc. Another uncontrollable mythology in which many people believe literally.

Krishnamurthi Vol. 1. The Years of Awakening & Vol. 2. The Years of Fulfillment. by Mary Lutyens (Avon Books 1975). Authoritative and excellently researched and written. Quite a story.
 Lives in the Shadow with J. Krishnamurti by Radha Rajagopal Sloss (London (copyright 1991) 1993) definitively explodes the myth of Krishnamurthi's supposed sexual purity and holiness.

Rebirth by Pratap Kumar Patnaik. 1985 - Cuttack/India. Study of Indian teaching on rebirth in Vedanta etc. with reported incidents to back up the belief. Nothing new beyond traditional ideas of karma and transmigration of souls. 

Cosmic Consciousness - or the Vedantic Idea of realisation or Mukthi by M.C. Nanjunda Row (1909 - & 1990 reprint. Madras)

Glorious Years by G.K. Damodar Row (Pages for the life history of his grandfather Dr. M.C. Nanjunda Row of Mylapore). An account of this grandfather’s typical Indian devotional life and not least of his integrity and service by a former judge who I knew well at Sathya Sai Baba’s ashrams.

Memoirs of a Bengali Civilian by John Beames (acute observations a district officer of an individualistic personality - 1837-1879)

Golden Interlude  Janet Dunbar (the Eden family in India 1836-1842. The life of pukka sahibs)

Livets Hensikt ('The purpose of Life') by Inayat Khan (1929 Oslo: Cammermeyers Boghandel) A typical Indian religious account of the meaning of life, as found in numerous Indian sources.

A Search for the Historical Jesus Prof. Fida Hassnain. Gateway Books. The Hollies. Wellow. Bath. England. The definitive source book on the findings in Kashmir concerning Jesus' active life in India. These putative facts have, for obvious reasons, never been recognised by any Christian church or denomination so far as is known.

Jesus lived in India Holger Kersten (1986 - Element Books: his unknown life before and after the crucifixion, partly based on Hassnain's work.)
Jesus døde i Kashmir (India) Andreas Faber-Kaiser. Very largely based on Hassnain's work. (trans Oslo 1981 by Jørgen Lorentzen)

Gayatri: The Highest Meditation Sadguru Sant Keshavadas (1978. Motilal Banardas. Delhi). This speaks for itself. It comes down to the belief that repetition of the mantra is all that really matters. 

Urkraften i Mennesket Swami Narayananda (1970 Borgens Billigb=ger) The guru who settled partly in Denmark/partly India and died around 1988 at over 90 years. He was in the Ramakrishna Math, but left it. He was reliably accused of sexual profligacy (I once knew persons who were insiders at his ashram).

Travels though Sacred India a guide to the sacred life of India by Roger Housden. (Thorsons, London 1996). A fairly wide-ranging ‘spiritual tourism’ in India in which the author swallows whole and then regurgitates for the reader virtually everything he is told. Not an illumining introduction to India, more of a fly trap.

Magic and Mystery in Tibet (Souvenir Press, London, 1967) Madame Alexandra David-Neel. This gives an insight into the rank superstitions of Tibetan Buddhism. It is a very descriptive of Tibet in the early days (1912), and the author’s spiritual search agenda did not cause her to interpret in the usual fanciful way, as she had a critical and sceptical approach.

Indian Scriptural texts and commentaries:

"The Wisdom of Vedanta" K.P. Bahadur (1983. India) Upanishadic texts and commentaries. Wisdom is so many things and the Upanishads have their share of traditional insights, but of course the word knowledge does not apply here.

"Srimad Bhagavatam" (2 vols) trans. N. Raghunathan. (1976 Madras). The most authoritative trans. of perhaps the greatest Indian text... by India's foremost journalist of his times, who also taught V.K. Narasimhan his trade. Perfection in English and highly accurate. The Bhagavatham mythology is too unrealistic to take seriously, but the morals one can draw from these tales can be good and possibly inspiring of good actions, though alas not of deep understanding of the universe (unless one is God-fixated).

"The Principal Upanishads" Sri Swami Sivananda (1983 Rishikesh) The seven chief upanishads in text with translations, notes and commentaries.

"Upanishads in Story & Dialogue" R.R. Diwarkar. (Bharatiya Vidya Bhavan)

"The Upanishads" (1965 - Penguin Classics) Selected translations.

"Shankara's Teachings in His Own Words" Swami Atmananda (1989) Bharatiya Vidya Bhavan. Bombay)

"Sankara on the Yoga Sutras" Trevor Leggett (1992. Motilal Banardas)
A full translation of the newly discovered text.  Heavy and undigestible religious speculation presented uncritically as truth.

"The Scientific Foundations of Jainism" K.V. Mardia (pub. Motilala Banardas/Delhi 1980s)
A typical semi-educated India’s tract, including the attempt to justify values by science – a complete non-starter which ignored the basic distinction between ‘fact’ and ‘value’.

"The God of Buddha" Jamshed Fozdar (1973 - Asia Pub. House, London)
Textual comparisons of Vedantic and Buddhist texts to show identity/Vedic origin etc.) 
The Doctrine of Liberation in Indian Religion" (1984. India) Dr. Muni Shivkumar. With special reference to Jainism.

"Den historiske Jesus i Vestlig og Østlig tradition" (i.e. The Historical Jesus in Western and Eastern Tradition) Jørgen Hovgaard. (1994. Danmark) This is a second-hand compilation of certain texts and apocrypha relating to Jesus. Nothing remarkable, written by a true believer in Sathya Sai Baba.

"Hindu Myths" (1975 trans. Penguin Classics) A source book trans. from Sanskrit on the major Gods in Hindu scriptures. This is genuine historical material which does not select out of religious-political correctness but also includes some of the most depraved and absurd excerpts from the scriptures such as the Puranas. 

"A Dictionary of Hinduism" Margaret James & James Stutley. (1977) Mythology, folklore and development 1500BC - AD 1500. Useful for persons disoriented amid the welter of deities and mythological gigures, source materials and diverse related facts.

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In addition to all these Indian books, I have read well over 300 books on or by Sathya Sai Baba, plus over 16 years of his journal Sanathana Sarathi.
I have long used a wide range of encyclopaedias, dictionaries, and reference works of all kinds, now mostly superseded by the Internet.