To mark the Platinum Jubilee of Queen Elizabeth II, The Reading Agency have compiled a literary celebration of seventy novels, short story anthologies and poetry collections published in the Commonwealth since 1952.
Featuring ten works from each decade of the Queen’s reign, the list includes books with a Scottish author or other Scottish connection:
- The Girls of Slender Means by Muriel Spark (Penguin) (1962–1971)
- The Adoption Papers by Jackie Kay (Bloodaxe Books) (1982–1991)
- Life of Pi by Yann Martel (Canadian – published in the UK by Edinburgh’s Canongate Books) (1992–2001)
- The Secret River by Kate Grenville (Australian – published in the UK by Canongate Books) (2002–2011)
- The Memory of Love by Aminatta Forna (Bloomsbury Publishing) (2002–2011)
- Shuggie Bain by Douglas Stuart (Picador) (2012–2021)
The works were chosen by an expert panel of librarians, booksellers and literature specialists from a “readers’ choice” longlist with ten books for each decade of the Queen’s record-breaking reign.
You can see the full list on the BBC website at The Big Jubilee Read.
