Tara Brach’s four-step RAIN meditation can be an integral part of anyone’s mindfulness practice. RAIN helps us uncover the states of love, self-care, forgiveness, compassion, and tenderness we each are capable of. It is a useful and elegant system, and Radical Compassion is a beautifully written book.

Radical Compassion lays out a path of straightforward, accessible practices grounded in both modern brain science and ancient wisdom—with the soul and depth you’d expect from a world-class meditation teacher and psychologist. A masterpiece.

A powerful book that will free you from shame, fear, and negative self-beliefs. You will feel wiser, happier, and kinder after reading it.

Tara Brach has an uncanny ability to home in precisely on what we need in the moment, so we can meet that need from within. She teaches a simple but life-changing practice to bring presence and compassion to any moment of shame or longing or struggle, transforming our pain into love. This book is a treasure from one of the most important spiritual teachers of our time.

In this magnificent synthesis of her important teachings in cultivating compassion in our everyday lives, Tara Brach offers us a life-changing tool to open our awareness with love and healing. This important book is as practical as it is profound, a deep and lasting gift for us all.

His quirky, fun approach has connected with young people . . . and he has been compared to the 'Hot Priest' in the BBC Comedy Fleabag.

I am not religious in the least, but I still like listening to your sermons and thoughts.

It's amazing how sometimes you hear something that speaks to your soul! Thank you for your beautiful words!

I'm an agnostic but this priest's faith and purity deeply touches my heart.

More followers than the Archbishop of Canterbury.

He has garnered more than 100,000 Instagram followers with his 60-second sermons.

His Instagram followers vastly outnumber those who follow either the Archbishop of Canterbury or the church itself.

Even though I'm an atheist, I appreciate your approach on religion and morality in such a humble and laid-back way!

I’m not Christian, but I do really enjoy your lovely viewpoint on life.

You always bring a smile to my face when all I've done is fret and worry about what I can and can't do.

This guy seems to perfectly embody the traits of a good christian. More people need to be as loving as he is...

Garrett spent several years travelling the world, going down into bunkers and talking to their owners and tenants. His book is an incredible record of that journey, and also functions as a philosophical or psychological disquisition about space, about freedom, about survival. Bunker is an incredible read and will surely sell in quite enormous numbers, assuming the human race remains intact and can still read.

Stephen Fry's Troy delivers on all its promise, and then some. In audio book form it is, for a Bronze Age tale, an unalloyed delight.

This podcast is perfectly named. Sam makes sense of important, difficult, and often controversial topics with deep preparation, sharp questions, and intellectual fearlessness. More, please!

There are precious few spaces in the media landscape where difficult, rigorous and respectful conversations can play out at substantial length, without agenda. Sam Harris created the model for such illuminating exchange, and the Making Sense podcast is a treasure trove of discussions with many of the most compelling and fascinating minds of our era.

Making Sense is a refuelling station for the mind, and I visit it regularly. As an interviewer, Sam is both rigorous and generous. His show is completely devoid of the cheap shots and tribal bickering that characterize so much of podcasting. Making Sense is joyful play of the mind, without a trace of the partisan cretinism that disfigures the vast majority of our discourse these days.

Making Sense is one of the most thought-provoking podcasts that I've come across. Sam Harris does an incredible job probing—and finding answers to—some of the most important questions of our times.

Whether the discussion is about artificial intelligence, the future capacities of knowledge, politics, philosophy, intuition, history (philosopher Thomas Metzinger shares experiences from post–World War II Germany that are hard to look away from), religion, reason, or the nature of consciousness, Harris grounds lofty discussions with concrete examples and his gift for analogy . . . free and open debate, in the best sense of the word . . . the book’s advantage over the podcast is that readers can linger as they need to and cherry-pick interviews at will. Recommended for anyone who wants to spend time with intelligent minds wrestling not with each other but with understanding.

One of the most eloquent and inspiring memoirs of recent years... A Dutiful Boy is real-life storytelling at its finest

Mohsin Zaidi...in a compassionate, compelling and humorous way, tells his story of seeking acceptance within the gay community, and within the Muslim community in which he grew up

A powerful portrayal of being able to live authentically despite all the odds

Zaidi's affecting memoir recounts his journey growing up in east London in a devout Muslim household. He has a secret, one he cannot share with anyone - he is gay. When he moves away to study at Oxford he finds, for the first time, the possibility of living his life authentically. The dissonance this causes in him - of finding a way to accept himself while knowing his family will not do the same - is so sensitively depicted. One of the most moving chapters includes him coming home to a witch doctor, who his family has summoned to "cure" him. This is an incredibly important read, full of hope.

A beautifully written book, a lovely story, life-affirming

Zaidi's account is raw, honest and at times quite painful to read. It's so vivid that it feels almost tangible, as though you're living the experiences of the author himself.

This heartfelt and honest book is beautifully written and full of hope

We're obsessed with Emily Maitlis in this house

Emily Maitlis is a particular hero of mine . . . I know I'm in for a treat with Airhead

Emily Maitlis is one of my favourite interviewers and I want to read her tales of interviewing people such as Donald Trump, Theresa May and Simon Cowell

A fascinating behind-the-scenes insight into modern television news

It's a brilliant, often funny, behind-the-scenes account of her working life, written by one of Britain's best television broadcasters. It proves she's far from an airhead!

She gives readers a behind-the-scenes look at some of the most engaging interviews she's conducted in recent years - with all the wrangling, arguing, pleading and last-minute script writing they involved. Insightful, funny and engrossing, we love it.