Everybody loves a list but this is a list of major ambition: namely, to select the best 100 novels in the English language, published from the late 17th century to the present day. This list has been built up week by week in The Observer since September 2013, and selected by writer and Observer editor Robert McCrum. With a short critique on each book, this is a real delight for literary lovers.

“A fascinating study not only of the roots and growth of our own language but of its future.”—Bloomsbury ReviewIt seems impossible: a small island in the North Atlantic, colonized by Rome, then pillaged for hundreds of years by marauding neighbors, becomes the dominant world power in the nineteenth century. In this provocative new look at the course of empire, Robert McCrum shows how the language of the Anglo-American imperium has become the world’s lingua...

As read on BBC Radio 4 Book of the Week**'Moving, intellectual and unsentimental. I think it will become a classic' Melvyn Bragg'Thoughtful, subtle, elegantly clever and oddly joyous, Every Third Thought is beautiful'** Kate MosseIn 1995, at the age of forty-two, Robert McCrum suffered a dramatic and near-fatal stroke. Since that life-changing event, McCrum has lived in the shadow of death, unavoidably aware of his own mort...

Why do authors write? How do they go about it? What is good writing?In On Writing, Robert McCrum collects together his questions and reflections on the nature of writing from his Observer newspaper column. In them he explores the sometimes tricky relationship between writing and commerce, looks at the state of modern literature, and asks where great writing really comes from can it be taught, or is it borne out of author experience?A unique and informed view on writing and how it is affected...

A rousing history of the penalty kick and its introduction in English football by a famed British writer & editor.Football, in the 1880s, was a rough and dangerous game. To address the abhorrent state of the sport, William McCrum, an amateur Irish goalkeeper and the author's great-grandfather, proposed the penalty kick, a new and drastic sanction introduced to the game in 1891. For over a hundred years, this extraordinary phenomenon has not only regulated the condu...

Introduced by Annie Proulx, l ose yourself in an epic naval journey in this Booker Prize-winning novel: the first in the acclaimed Sea Trilogy by the author of Lord of the Flies.I grow a little crazy, I think, like all men at sea who live too close to each other and too close thereby to all that is monstrous under the sun and moon . . .Edmund Talbot is sailing t...

* A Washington Post Best Book of the Year *"A remarkable book that takes us to the heart of Shakespeare's art and influence."—James ShapiroWhen Robert McCrum began his recovery from a life-changing stroke, he discovered that the only words that made sense to him were snatches of Shakespeare. Unable to travel or move as he used to, the First Folio became his "book of life"—an endless source of inspiration through which he could emba...

We read for all sorts of reasons: pleasure, education, escapism, intellectual stimulation. The act of reading is a private, personal one that we love to share with our friends and families. Reading and books form a world rich in detail, memory and emotion.In On Reading, Robert McCrum draws together his Observer columns to reflect on what reading brings us, how to best go about it and how what we read is shifting and changing as new technologies open up new ways of telling stories.A fascinatin...

In nearly twenty years, Robert McCrum has interviewed literatures most influential subjects. In On Authors, McCrum reflects on the experience of interviewing these literary giants and collects together the very best Observer interviews.

Introduction Copyright 2015 Henry Marsh, Afterword Copyright 2015 Robert McCrumRobert McCrum was forty-two when he suffered a massive stroke which left one side of his body paralysed, his speech drastically impaired and his sense of himself radically altered. My Year Off traces McCrum’s gruelling recovery as he regains sensation and begins to come to terms, with the help of his family, with what can and cannot be recovered after a grave injury. It is a moving remonstrance against h...

After a near fatal stroke in 1995, Robert McCrum has gained an intimate understanding of his own mortality. Twenty-two years on, his friends have joined him in experiencing Prospero’s ‘every third thought’ of death as a dominating theme of life. McCrum asks: can we make peace with what Freud calls ‘the necessity of dying’? Searching for answers leads him to brain surgeons, psychologists, cancer patients and writers for advice and wisdom. For anyone preoccupied by living in the lengthening ...

It seems impossible: a small island in the North Atlantic, colonized by Rome, then pillaged for hundreds of years by marauding neighbors, becomes the dominant world power in the nineteenth century. Equally unlikely, a colony of that island nation across the Atlantic grows into the military and cultural colossus of the twentieth century. How? By the sword, of course; by trade and industrial ingenuity; but principally, and most surprisingly, by the power of their common language.In t...