Seventy books from across the Commonwealth have been selected to make up a reading list commemorating Queen Elizabeth II’s platinum jubilee.
The Big Jubilee Read was created by BBC Arts and The Reading Agency. It was compiled by librarians, booksellers and literature experts based on readers' recommendations from 31 countries.
The list incorporates 10 books that represent each of the seven decades of the queen's rule. It includes novels as well as short story and poetry collections published since 1952. Some featured works are Salman Rushdie’s Midnight’s Children, Margaret Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale, A Clockwork Orange by Anthony Burgess, and Life of Pi by Yann Martel.
Booker Prize winners from the past three years, including Bernardine Evaristo’s Girl, Woman, Other, Douglas Stuart’s Shuggie Bain and The Promise by Damon Galgut are also on the list.
There are a few glaring omissions, however.
Among them are J K Rowling’s Harry Potter books.
Susheila Nasta, emeritus professor of modern and contemporary literature at Queen Mary University of London, said there were discussions on whether to include Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone. Ultimately, the committee omitted the book as it pared down the 152 recommendations.
“Lots of fantastic books were suggested for the list," Nasta told BBC Radio 4. But the feeling was that Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone "was primarily a children’s book”.
“In terms of the space over that decade, which was the '90s when more and more books were coming out across the Commonwealth, it was decided to make space for a book that was good and equally well received,” Nasta said.
Rowling has come under criticism in the past two years over controversial comments she has made regarding transgender issues.
Other books that didn’t make the final list include The Lord of the Rings by J R R Tolkien and Doris Lessing’s The Golden Notebook.
“The Golden Notebook … was a huge influence on me, but we had to drop some … there were two books for every place.”
The complete Big Jubilee Read list
From 1952 to 1961
- The Palm-Wine Drinkard – Amos Tutuola (1952, Nigeria)
- The Hills Were Joyful Together – Roger Mais (1953, Jamaica)
- In the Castle of My Skin – George Lamming (1953, Barbados)
- My Bones and My Flute – Edgar Mittelholzer (1955, Guyana)
- The Lonely Londoners – Sam Selvon (1956, Trinidad and Tobago/England)
- The Guide – RK Narayan (1958, India)
- To Sir, With Love – ER Braithwaite (1959, Guyana)
- One Moonlit Night – Caradog Prichard (1961, Wales)
- A House for Mr Biswas – VS Naipaul (1961, Trinidad and Tobago/England)
- Sunlight on a Broken Column – Attia Hosain (1961, India)
From 1962 to 1971
- A Clockwork Orange – Anthony Burgess (1962, England)
- The Interrogation – JMG Le Clezio (1963, France/Mauritius)
- The Girls of Slender Means – Muriel Spark (1963, Scotland)
- Arrow of God – Chinua Achebe (1964, Nigeria)
- Death of a Naturalist – Seamus Heaney (1966, Northern Ireland)
- Wide Sargasso Sea – Jean Rhys (1966, Dominica/Wales)
- A Grain of Wheat – Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o (1967, Kenya)
- Picnic at Hanging Rock – Joan Lindsay (1967, Australia)
- The Beautyful Ones Are Not Yet Born – Ayi Kwei Armah (1968, Ghana)
- When Rain Clouds Gather – Bessie Head (1968, Botswana/South Africa)
From 1972 to 1981
- The Nowhere Man – Kamala Markandaya (1972, India)
- Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy – John Le Carre (1974, England)
- The Thorn Birds – Colleen McCullough (1977, Australia)
- The Crow Eaters – Bapsi Sidhwa (1978, Pakistan)
- The Sea, The Sea – Iris Murdoch (1978, England)
- Who Do You think You Are? – Alice Munro (1978, Canada)
- The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy – Douglas Adams (1979, England)
- Tsotsi – Athol Fugard (1980, South Africa)
- Clear Light of Day – Anita Desai (1980, India)
- Midnight’s Children – Salman Rushdie (1981, England/India)
From 1982 to 1991
- Schindler’s Ark – Thomas Keneally (1982, Australia)
- Beka Lamb – Zee Edgell (1982, Belize)
- The Bone People – Keri Hulme (1984, New Zealand)
- The Handmaid’s Tale – Margaret Atwood (1985, Canada)
- Summer Lightning – Olive Senior (1986, Jamaica)
- The Whale Rider – Witi Ihimaera (1987, New Zealand)
- The Remains of the Day – Kazuo Ishiguro (1989, England)
- Omeros – Derek Walcott (1990, Saint Lucia)
- The Adoption Papers – Jackie Kay (1991, Scotland)
- Cloudstreet – Tim Winton (1991, Australia)
From 1992 to 2001
- The English Patient – Michael Ondaatje (1992, Canada/Sri Lanka)
- The Stone Diaries – Carol Shields (1993, Canada)
- Paradise – Abdulrazak Gurnah (1994, Tanzania/England)
- A Fine Balance – Rohinton Mistry (1995, India/Canada)
- Salt – Earl Lovelace (1996, Trinidad and Tobago)
- The God of Small Things – Arundhati Roy (1997, India)
- The Blue Bedspread – Raj Kamal Jha (1999, India)
- Disgrace – J M Coetzee (1999, South Africa/Australia)
- White Teeth – Zadie Smith (2000, England)
- Life of Pi – Yann Martel (2001, Canada)
From 2002 to 2011
- Small Island – Andrea Levy (2004, England)
- The Secret River – Kate Grenville (2005, Australia)
- The Book Thief – Markus Zusak (2005, Australia)
- Half of a Yellow Sun – Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie (2006, Nigeria)
- A Golden Age – Tahmima Anam (2007, Bangladesh)
- The Boat – Nam Le (2008, Australia)
- Wolf Hall – Hilary Mantel (2009, England)
- The Book of Night Women – Marlon James (2009, Jamaica)
- The Memory of Love – Aminatta Forna (2010, Sierra Leone/Scotland)
- Chinaman – Shehan Karunatilaka (2010, Sri Lanka)
From 2012 to 2021
- Our Lady of the Nile – Scholastique Mukasonga (2012, Rwanda)
- The Luminaries – Eleanor Catton (2013, New Zealand)
- Behold the Dreamers – Imbolo Mbue (2016, Cameroon)
- The Bone Readers – Jacob Ross (2016, Grenada)
- How We Disappeared – Jing-Jing Lee (2019, Singapore)
- Girl, Woman, Other – Bernardine Evaristo (2019, England)
- The Night Tiger – Yangsze Choo (2019, Malaysia)
- Shuggie Bain – Douglas Stuart (2020, Scotland)
- A Passage North – Anuk Arudpragasam (2021, Sri Lanka)
- The Promise – Damon Galgut (2021, South Africa)
TOUR RESULTS AND FIXTURES
June 3: NZ Provincial Barbarians 7 Lions 13
June 7: Blues 22 Lions 16
June 10: Crusaders 3 Lions 12
June 13: Highlanders 23 Lions 22
June 17: Maori All Blacks 10 Lions 32
June 20: Chiefs 6 Lions 34
June 24: New Zealand 30 Lions 15 (First Test)
June 27: Hurricanes 31 Lions 31
July 1: New Zealand 21 Lions 24 (Second Test)
July 8: New Zealand v Lions (Third Test) - kick-off 11.30am (UAE)
Landfill in numbers
• Landfill gas is composed of 50 per cent methane
• Methane is 28 times more harmful than Co2 in terms of global warming
• 11 million total tonnes of waste are being generated annually in Abu Dhabi
• 18,000 tonnes per year of hazardous and medical waste is produced in Abu Dhabi emirate per year
• 20,000 litres of cooking oil produced in Abu Dhabi’s cafeterias and restaurants every day is thrown away
• 50 per cent of Abu Dhabi’s waste is from construction and demolition
The biog
Hobbies: Writing and running
Favourite sport: beach volleyball
Favourite holiday destinations: Turkey and Puerto Rico
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Meydan Racecourse racecard:
6.30pm: The Madjani Stakes Listed (PA) | Dh175,000 | 1,900m
7.05pm: Maiden for 2-year-old fillies (TB) | Dh165,000 | 1,400m
7.40pm: The Dubai Creek Mile Listed (TB) | Dh265,000 | 1,600m
8.15pm: Maiden for 2-year-old colts (TB) | Dh165,000 | 1,600m
8.50pm: The Entisar Listed (TB) | Dh265,000 | 2,000m
9.25pm: Handicap (TB) | Dh190,000 | 1,200m
10pm: Handicap (TB) | Dh190,000 | 1,600m.
UAE rugby in numbers
5 - Year sponsorship deal between Hesco and Jebel Ali Dragons
700 - Dubai Hurricanes had more than 700 playing members last season between their mini and youth, men's and women's teams
Dh600,000 - Dubai Exiles' budget for pitch and court hire next season, for their rugby, netball and cricket teams
Dh1.8m - Dubai Hurricanes' overall budget for next season
Dh2.8m - Dubai Exiles’ overall budget for next season
Our legal columnist
Name: Yousef Al Bahar
Advocate at Al Bahar & Associate Advocates and Legal Consultants, established in 1994
Education: Mr Al Bahar was born in 1979 and graduated in 2008 from the Judicial Institute. He took after his father, who was one of the first Emirati lawyers
Water waste
In the UAE’s arid climate, small shrubs, bushes and flower beds usually require about six litres of water per square metre, daily. That increases to 12 litres per square metre a day for small trees, and 300 litres for palm trees.
Horticulturists suggest the best time for watering is before 8am or after 6pm, when water won't be dried up by the sun.
A global report published by the Water Resources Institute in August, ranked the UAE 10th out of 164 nations where water supplies are most stretched.
The Emirates is the world’s third largest per capita water consumer after the US and Canada.
Pad Man
Dir: R Balki
Starring: Akshay Kumar, Sonam Kapoor, Radhika Apte
Three-and-a-half stars
The Two Popes
Director: Fernando Meirelles
Stars: Anthony Hopkins, Jonathan Pryce
Four out of five stars
The bio:
Favourite film:
Declan: It was The Commitments but now it’s Bohemian Rhapsody.
Heidi: The Long Kiss Goodnight.
Favourite holiday destination:
Declan: Las Vegas but I also love getting home to Ireland and seeing everyone back home.
Heidi: Australia but my dream destination would be to go to Cuba.
Favourite pastime:
Declan: I love brunching and socializing. Just basically having the craic.
Heidi: Paddleboarding and swimming.
Personal motto:
Declan: Take chances.
Heidi: Live, love, laugh and have no regrets.
'Project Power'
Stars: Jamie Foxx, Joseph Gordon-Levitt, Dominique Fishback
Director: Henry Joost and Ariel Schulman
Rating: 3.5/5
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The specs
Engine: Two permanent-magnet synchronous AC motors
Transmission: two-speed
Power: 671hp
Torque: 849Nm
Range: 456km
Price: from Dh437,900
On sale: now
Uefa Nations League: How it Works
The Uefa Nations League, introduced last year, has reached its final stage, to be played over five days in northern Portugal. The format of its closing tournament is compact, spread over two semi-finals, with the first, Portugal versus Switzerland in Porto on Wednesday evening, and the second, England against the Netherlands, in Guimaraes, on Thursday.
The winners of each semi will then meet at Porto’s Dragao stadium on Sunday, with the losing semi-finalists contesting a third-place play-off in Guimaraes earlier that day.
Qualifying for the final stage was via League A of the inaugural Nations League, in which the top 12 European countries according to Uefa's co-efficient seeding system were divided into four groups, the teams playing each other twice between September and November. Portugal, who finished above Italy and Poland, successfully bid to host the finals.
The biog
Title: General Practitioner with a speciality in cardiology
Previous jobs: Worked in well-known hospitals Jaslok and Breach Candy in Mumbai, India
Education: Medical degree from the Government Medical College in Nagpur
How it all began: opened his first clinic in Ajman in 1993
Family: a 90-year-old mother, wife and two daughters
Remembers a time when medicines from India were purchased per kilo
HEADLINE HERE
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A Bad Moms Christmas
Dir: John Lucas and Scott Moore
Starring: Mila Kunis, Kathryn Hahn, Kristen Bell, Susan Sarandon, Christine Baranski, Cheryl Hines
Two stars
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Killing of Qassem Suleimani
The Dark Blue Winter Overcoat & Other Stories From the North
Edited and Introduced by Sjón and Ted Hodgkinson
Pushkin Press
The specs
- Engine: 3.9-litre twin-turbo V8
- Power: 640hp
- Torque: 760nm
- On sale: 2026
- Price: Not announced yet
Meydan race card
6.30pm: Maiden Dh 165,000 1,600m
7.05pm: Handicap Dh 185,000 2,000m
7.40pm: Maiden Dh 165,000 1,600m
8.15pm: Handicap Dh 190,000 1,400m
8.50pm: Handicap Dh 175,000 1,600m
9.25pm: Handicap Dh 175,000 1,200m
10pm: Handicap Dh 165,000 1,600m
The Al Barzakh Festival takes place on Wednesday and Thursday at 7.30pm in the Red Theatre, NYUAD, Saadiyat Island. Tickets cost Dh105 for adults from platinumlist.net
List of alleged parties
May 15 2020: PM and Carrie attend 'work meeting' with at
least 17 staff members
May 20 2020: PM and Carrie attend 'bring your own booze'
party
Nov 27 2020: PM gives speech at leaving do for his staff
Dec 10 2020: Staff party held by then-education secretary
Gavin Williamson
Dec 13 2020: PM and Carrie throw a flat party
Dec 14 2020: London mayor candidate Shaun Bailey holds staff party at Conservative
Party headquarters
Dec 15 2020: PM takes part in a staff quiz
Dec 18 2020: Downing Street Christmas party
