The best-written nonfiction recent releases; and Francis Spufford's Golden Hill

Read extracts from our picks below ^ Plus The One

In today’s issue

— ‘As a mason must build a wall one brick at a time, though the finished wall be smooth and sheer, so in individual pieces did Mr Smith’s consciousness return to him, the next day, as he lay in the truckle bed of Mrs Lee’s gable-end bedroom, and assembled the world again’: an extended extract from Francis Spufford’s Golden Hill, which we chose as the best-written previous winner of the Ondaatje Prize, part of our project to find the best-written books of the century to date. We’ll soon be publishing Spufford’s Auraist masterclass on prose style.

—’There are songs that divide pop history into Before and After. Some are incontestable : ‘She Loves You’, ‘Anarchy in the U.K.’, ‘Rapper’s Delight’. Others are up for debate’: our first pick of the best-written recent releases in nonfiction.

—‘nightporters doing a posh actor’s angular sextagenarian dancing from a Richard Curtis turkey during an orgy were probably not the worst holiday anecdote to take home’: The One, part 9 of