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Portable, personal and agreeably permanent — books make the best Christmas presents. Here are ten that belong on everybody’s gift list... SCIENCE AND NATURE SPACE: THE HUMAN STORY TIM PEAKE Only 628 people have ever left Earth, so when one of them writes a book on the subject it’s worth a look. “Major Tim”, of course, has plenty of personal insight to offer — the physical and psychological pressures, the changed perspective on life, the danger, the humour and even the ennui — but he’s also spoken to astronauts of all eras to make this a true survey of mankind’s...

Ooh,” coos Richard Armitage, “I like the fact that you’ve referred to me as an author!” The reason I’ve described him as such is because his first novel is out this week. But he’s excited to be referred to that way because, of course, he’s better known as an actor – as Thorin, the dwarf king in Peter Jackson’s The Hobbit trilogy; as Lucas North in the BBC spy drama Spooks; and for other scene-pilfering roles, from Dawn French’s The Vicar of Dibley to Chekhov’s Uncle Vanya and, earlier this year, the darkly erotic Netflix drama Obsession. The reason Armitage...

“I’m gentrifying the crime novel,” proclaims John Banville. “My aim is to turn crime fiction into a literary form.” The Irish author’s shift from prize-winning heavyweight to genre-fiction bestseller is one of the more unexpected twists in an illustrious career.   The winner of the 2005 Man Booker prize for The Sea and several other awards, Banville is frequently listed among the runners and riders in contention for the Nobel Prize for Literature. In 2006, he began writing detective novels featuring morose pathologist Quirke – played on television by Gabriel Byrne – under the pseudonym Benjamin Black. More recently, he...

Michael Rosen sniffs his armpit, winces slightly and confirms that, no, there is “no danger” of his marketing a candle with a scent based on that of his intimate body parts. “I’m not Gwyneth Paltrow,” he explains, “and I’m not some kind of guru.” Instead, says the writer and broadcaster, “I’m somebody who has had some experiences, tried to chew over them and written about them in case people find that at all helpful.”   He’s downplaying not just the wisdom with which his latest book, Getting Better, is laced, but also how hard-won it has been. It covers his...

When I was 25 years old,” begins Dasha Kiper’s book, “I moved in with a man who was 98.” It’s an intriguing opening line, but the pages that follow are even more fascinating. Until she paused to write Travellers to Unimaginable Lands, which is Radio 4’s Book of the Week, Kiper was a consulting clinical director at an Alzheimer’s organisation in New York.   The 98-year-old, Mr Kessler, was a Holocaust survivor and dementia sufferer, and the story of how Kessler and Kiper coped together is just the first of several painful, poignant, funny, revealing and instructive case studies that form...