Recommended Reading

The following books have been recommended by Sixth Form staff and admissions tutors. They are intended to support the super-curriculum and are recommended for all students, and those applying to Russell Group Universities in particular.

The following books and periodicals should be available in the School Library:

Be a well rounded person – a quick overview of the world!

Sophie’s World by Jostein Gaarder – Overview of Philosophy
Bad Science by Ben Goldacre – The Scientific Method
Six Easy Pieces by Richard Feynmann – How the World Works
The Undercover Economist by Tim Harford – Economics
Sapiens by Yuval Noah Harari – A Brief History of Humankind
Ways of Seeing by John Berger – The Way we View Art
How to Read Literature by Terry Eagleton – An Introduction to Literary Theory
PLUS a quality Sunday paper (Times, Observer, Telegraph)

The below A Level subject teachers have put together a suggested reading list to help you with your course:

Art

– The Shock of the New by Robert Hughes
– Pioneers of Modern Design by Niklaus Pevsner
– The Poetics of Space by Gaston Bachelard

Biology

– The Selfish Gene by Richard Dawkins
– Life unfolding, by Jamie A. Davies
– The Rules of Contagion: Why Things Spread – and Why They Stop by Adam Kucharski
– Creation or evolution – why do we have to choose by Denis Alexander
– Philosophy of Science: a very short introduction by Samir Oshaka
– This is going to hurt by Adam Kay
– Genome by Matt Ridley
– The Selfish Gene by Richard Dawkins
– The Red Queen by Matt Ridley
– The Lives of a Cell: Notes of a Biology Watcher by Lewis Thomas
– The Medusa and the Snail: More Notes of a Biology Watcher by Lewis Thomas
– The Rough Guide to the Brain by Barry Gibb

Computer Science

– Godel Escher Bach by Douglas Hofstadter
– The Pragmatic Programmer by Andy Hunt and Dave Thomas

Design and Technology: 3D Design

Drawing and Presentation Titles

Drawing for Product Designers (Portfolio Skills) by Kevin Henry
Sketching: Drawing Techniques for Product Designers by Roselien Steur and Koos Eissen
30-Day Industrial Product Design Sketching Challenge: Unleash Your Creative Potential – Master Industrial Product Sketching by 30-Day Challenge
Drawing Ideas: A Hand-Drawn Approach for Better Design by Mark Baskinger and William Bardel
Creative Sketching in Product Design by SendPoints
Marker Rendering for Fashion, Accessories, and Home Fashion: For Fashion, Accessories, and Home Fashions by Bina Abling

Design History

Design History Handbook by Domitilla Dardi and Vanni Pasca
Design History: A Students’ Handbook by Hazel Conway
What is Product Design? (Essential Design Handbooks S.) by Laura Slack
100 Ideas that Changed Design by Peter Fiell and Charlotte Fiell
Design: The Definitive Visual History (DK Definitive Cultural Histories) by DK , Judith Miller, et al

Designers

Design of the 20th Century by Charlotte & Peter Fiell
A Century of Design: Design Pioneers of the 20th Century by Penny Sparke
Women Design: Pioneers from the twentieth century to today by Libby Sellers
Twentieth-century Design (Oxford History of Art) by Jonathan M. Woodham

Drama

– Dr Faustus Christopher Marlowe
– Lady Windermere’s Fan Oscar Wilde
– A Streetcar Named Desire Tennessee Williams
– Any play by Shakespeare
– Translations Brian Friel
– Dancing at Lughnasa Brian Friel
– A View from the Bridge Arthur Miller
– A Taste of Honey Shelagh Delaney
– The Duchess of Malfi John Webster
– The History Boys Alan Bennett
– Cat on a Hot Tin Roof Tennessee Williams
– Top Girls Carol Churchill
– The Caucasian Chalk Circle Berthold Brecht
– Miss Julie August Strindberg

Economics

– Freakonomics by Levitt and Dubner
– The Signal and the Noise by Nate Silver
– Thinking Fast and Slow by Daniel Kahneman

English Language

Writing Britain: Wastelands to Wonderlands – Christine Hardyment (there was a big British Library exhibition linked to this recently)
– Stephen King – On Writing
– How to Write Like Tolstoy: A Journey into the Minds of our Greatest Writers – Richard Cohen
– M Forsyth – The Etymologicon
– M Forsyth – The Horologicon
– M Forsyth – The Elements of Eloquence
– J Burnside – Word watching
– D Crystal – The Gift of the Gab
– C Voss -Never Split the Difference
– Drummond – You’re All Talking
– Webb – Essential Grammar
– Cameron – The Myth of Mars and Venus
– Cameron – Feminism: Language in Profile

English Literature

Classic Novels

– Wuthering Heights Emily Bronte
– Jane Eyre Charlotte Bronte
– Pride and Prejudice Jane Austen
– Mary Barton Elizabeth Gaskell
– The Woman in White Wilkie Collins
– David Copperfield Charles Dickens
– Great Expectations Charles Dickens
– A Passage to India E M Forster
– The Scarlet Letter Nathaniel Hawthorne
– Sons and Lovers D H Lawrence
– Lady Chatterley’s Lover D H Lawrence
– Rebecca Daphne du Maurier
– Dr Zhivago Boris Pasternak
– A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man James Joyce
– The Rainbow D H Lawrence
– Tess of the D’Urbevilles Thomas Hardy
– The Mayor of Casterbridge Thomas Hardy
– Germinal Emile Zola
– The End of the Affair Graham Greene
– Our Man in Havana Graham Greene
– The Great Gatsby F Scott Fitzgerald
– Dracula Bram Stoker
– Lolita Vladimir Nabokov
– Silas Marner George Elliot
– King Solomon’s Mines H Rider Haggard
– Robinson Crusoe Daniel Defoe
– Mrs Dalloway Virginia Woolf
– The Return of the Native Thomas Hardy
– The Old Man and the Sea Ernest Hemingway
– Henderson the Rain King Saul Bellow
– Breakfast of Champions Kurt Vonnegut
– Another Country James Baldwin
– Alone in Berlin Hans Fellada

Modern Novels

– A Week in December Sebastian Faulks
– Bird Song Sebastian Faulks
– Wide Sargasso Sea Jean Rhys
– The Secret Scripture Sebastian Barry
– Possession A S Byatt
– The Master and Margarita Mikhail Bulgakov
– Perfume Patrick Suskind
– Last Exit to Brooklyn Hubert Selby Jnr
– The Bonfire of the Vanities Tom Wolfe
– American Pastoral Philip Roth
– The New York Trilogy Paul Auster
– Resistance Owen Sheers
– I Saw a Man Owen Sheers
– The Shipping News Annie Proulx
– The Clearing Tim Gautreaux
– Never Let Me Go Kazuo Ishiguro
– Snow Falling on Cedars David Guterson
– Brooklyn Colm Toibin
– The Little Stranger Sarah Waters
– Suttree Cormac McCarthy
– The Remains of the Day Kazuo Ishiguro
– The Sea, The Sea Iris Murdoch
– The Color Purple Alice Walker
– The Heart is a Lonely Hunter Carson McCullers
– The English Patient Michael Ondaatje
– Beloved Toni Morrison
– The Talented Mr Ripley Patricia Highsmith
– Captain Corelli’s Mandolin Louis de Bernieres
– Wolf Hall Hilary Mantel
– The Blind Assassin Margaret Atwood
– Visit from the Goon Squad Jennifer Egan
– My Brilliant Friend Elena Ferrante
– Flowers for Algernon Daniel Keyes
– Americanah Chmimamanda Ngozi Adichie
– Love in the Time of Cholera Gabriel Garcia Marquez
– Blindness Jose Saramago

Poetry

– Ted Hughes
– Seamus Heaney
– Owen Sheers
– Carol Ann Duffy
– Robert Frost
– Philip Larkin
– W B Yeats
– Elizabeth Jennings
– William Blake
– P B Shelley
– John Keats
– W H Auden
– Wilfred Owen
– Sylvia Plath
– Wallace Stevens
– Elizabeth Bishop
– John Berryman
– Edward Thomas
– Charlotte Mew
– Adrienne Rich
– Anne Carson
– Rita Dove
– Don Paterson
– Edwin Morgan
– Patrick Kavanagh
– Sharon Olds
– Frank O’Hara
– Robin Robertson
– Louis MacNeice

Geography

“Prisoners of Geography: Ten Maps That Tell You Everything You Need to Know About Global Politics” by Tim Marshall.
“The Power of Geography: Ten Maps That Reveal the Future of Our World” by Tim Marshall.
“Adventures in the Anthropocene: A Journey to the Heart of the Planet We Made” by Gaia Vince.
“Factfulness: Ten Reasons We’re Wrong About the World – and Why Things Are Better Than You Think” by Hans Rosling.
“Why Geography Matters: More Than Ever” by Harm de Blij.

History

Political Biographies

– J.F.Kennedy – USA politics and the post war period of 1950s politics
– Bill Clinton – USA politics and changing international relations at the turn of the twentieth century
– Margaret Thatcher – British politics and middle class experiences in Post War Britain
– Nelson Mandela – South African politics and the struggle against apartheid
– Mo Mowlem – British politics and the peace negotiations in Northern Ireland

Real Lives

– S. Garfield, Our Hidden Lives: remarkable diaries of Post War Britain
– R. Roberts, Classic Slum: Salford life in the first quarter of the century
– J. Evelyn, The Diary
– R. Tressell, The Ragged Trousered Philanthropist

Classics

– Machiavelli, The Prince
– Paine, T The Rights of Man
– Wollstencroft, M The Rights of Women
– Smith, A The Wealth of Nations
– More, T Utopia
– Rowse, A.L. The Use of History
– Carr, E.H What is History?
– Marwick, A. The Nature of History
– Cowley, R What if? Military Historians imagine what might have been
– Ferguson, N Virtual history: Alternatives and Counterfactuals

Tasters

– Herodotus The Histories
– Vasari The Lives of the Painters, Sculptors and Architects (Renaissance)
– Chaucer, G. The Canterbury Tales
– Boswell The Life of Samuel Johnson
– Boswell & Johnson A Journey through Scotland & the New Hebrides
– Orwell, G. Homage to Catalonia

Maths

– 17 Equations that Changed the World by Ian Stewart
– Professor Stewart’s Cabinet of Mathematical Curiosities by Ian Stewart
– The Simpson’s and their Mathematical Secrets by Simon Singh

The following book is difficult, but mind blowing!

– Gödel, Escher, Bach by Douglas R Hofstadter

Music

– A History of Western Music – Grout
– The Symphony: From Mannheim to Mahler – Tarrant and Wild

PE

Clegg, C. Exercise Physiology And Functional Anatomy (1995) Feltham Press
Walder, P. Mechanics And Sport Performance (1998) Feltham Press (1998)
Black box thinking: the surprising truth about success Matthew Syed John Murray, 2015.
Bounce: the myth of talent and the power of practice Matthew Syed Fourth Estate, 2011.
Coaching for long term athlete development Ian Stafford Coachwise 1st4Sport, 2005.
The essential Wooden: a lifetime of lessons on leaders and leadership John Wooden and Steve Jamison McGraw Hill, 2007.
Inspired: stories of sporting greatness Steve Redgrave Headline, 2010.
Legacy: 15 lessons in leadership James Kerr Constable, 2013.
The talent code: greatness isn’t born, it’s grown Daniel Coyle Arrow, 2010.

Physics

– Six Not so Easy Pieces by Richard Feynmann
– The Chicken from Minsk by Yuri B. Chernyak
– The Wonderful World of Relativity by Andrew Steane
– In Search of Schrodinger’s Cat by John Gribbin
– Articles from Physics World Magazine
– Storm in a Teacup: The Physics of Everyday Life by Helen Czerski.

Politics

Ideology

Plato, The Republic (c. 375 BC)
Niccolo Machiavelli, The Prince (1532)
Thomas Hobbes, Leviathan (1651)
John Locke, Second Treatise of Government (1689)
Jean-Jacques Rousseau, The Social Contract (1762)
Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, The Communist Manifesto (1848)
John Stuart Mill, On Liberty (1859)

Modern Politics

‘What Happened?’ Hillary Rodham Clinton (2017)
A Promised land, Barack Obama (2020)
Politics on the Edge, Rory Stewart (2023)
Johnson at Ten, Anthony Seldon and Raymond Newell (2023)
The Abuse of Power, Theresa May (2023)

Psychology

Richard J. Gerrig, Philip Zimbardo, Frode Svartdal and Tim Brennen (2012) Psychology and Life; Allyn & Bacon.
Susan Nolen-Hoeksema, Willem Wagenaar, Barbara Fredrickson and Geoffrey R. Loftus (2009) Atkinson and Hilgard’s introduction to psychology; Cengage Learning.
Elephants on Acid: And Other Bizarre Experiments by Alex Boese
Ridley, M. (2004). Nature via Nurture: Genes, experience and what makes us human.
Hammond, Claudia. Emotional rollercoaster (2005) what we know about our emotions based on social psychology and neuroscience.
Pinker, Steven. How the mind works. Penguin 1997. Cognitive Psychology.

Religion, Philosophy, Ethics

– RA Bowie, Ethical Studies
– Richard Dawkins, The God Delusion
– Jostein Gaarder, Sophie’s World
– Nicky Hansell, The Sage Train: Philosophy Comes to Life
– Stephen Law, The Philosophy Gym: 25 Short Adventures in Thinking
– Richard Holloway, A Little History of Religion
– Peter Vardy, The Puzzle of Ethics
– Peter Vardy, The Puzzle of the Gospels
– Nigel Warburton, A Little History of Philosophy
– J Warner Wallace, Cold Case Christianity

Sociology

J.A. Hughes, W.W. Sharrock, and P.J. Martin (2003) Understanding Classical Sociology. London: Sage.
W. Outhwaite (ed) (2003) The Blackwell Dictionary of Modern Social Thought. Oxford: Blackwell.
Ulrich Beck (1992) Risk Society: Toward a New Modernity. London: Sage.
Anthony Giddens and Phillip Sutton (2013) Sociology. 7th Edition. Polity Press.
Owen Jones (2011) Chavs: The demonisation of the working class
Mikki Kendall (2020) Hood Feminism: Notes from the women white feminists forgot
Natasha Walter (2011) Living Dolls: The Return of Sexism