The Herald’s guide to which books to pack when heading off for the summer.
Whether they’re packing their passports or just looking forward to some down time at home, here some of the Herald’s regular and not-so-regular contributors share what they’re planning to read this summer – old favourites, new titles and almost everything in between.
William Cash
I am off to Portugal and will be packing Robert Harris’s Conclave, which remains the best novel about the papacy I have ever read. Harris somehow managed to get inside access to the Curia, and it shows in the compelling journalistic details. With Pope Francis due to create 21 new cardinals at a consistory in September, the thriller is heavenly and escapism. I also like the look of Kevin Starr’s Continental Achievement: Roman Catholics in the United States, which is the first volume of what promises to be a magnificent overview of how British recusants – alongside Spanish and French Catholics, Jews and Protestants – helped forge early Catholic identity from the American War of Independence to the early days of the Republic.
