THE
SUNDAY
TIMES
BESTSELLERS
GENERAL HARDBACKS
Last
weekWeeks in
top 101
Why Has Nobody Told Me This Before?
Julie Smith
(M Joseph £14.99)
Clinical psychologist’s advice for
navigating life’s ups and downs
(9,080)1122
The Boy, the Mole, the Fox and the Horse
Charlie Mackesy (Ebury £16.99) An illustrated
fable containing gentle life philosophy (4,010)2 1293
Queen of Our Times/Robert Hardman
(Macmillan £20) The life of Queen Elizabeth II from
her birth in 1926 to the present day (3,300)624
Manifest/Roxie Nafousi
(M Joseph £14.99) An introduction to the personal
development practice of manifestation (1,980)9125
Taste/Stanley Tucci
(Fig Tree £20) A gastronomic journey through the
actor’s life in and out of the kitchen (1,825)856
Butler to the World/Oliver Bullough
(Profile £20) How Britain became servant to the
world’s most powerful and corrupt men (1,495)737
A Bit of Me/Denise Van Outen
(Ebury Spotlight £20) The TV star reflects on her life
in the spotlight and struggles she’s overcome (1,465)11 18
Every Family Has a Story/Julia Samuel
(Penguin Life £14.99) Understanding and improving
our relationships with family members (1,385)529
Comedy, Comedy, Comedy, Drama/Bob Odenkirk
(Hodder Studio £20) The Better Call Saul actor on
his career in comedy and showbusiness (1,285)3210
Big Panda and Tiny Dragon/James Norbury
(M Joseph £14.99) Illustrated mindful tale of
friendship, inspired by Buddhist philosophy (1,230)12 20GENERAL PAPERBACKS
Last
weekWeeks
in top 101
This Is Going to Hurt
Adam Kay
(Picador £8.99)
A doctor turned comedian’s account of
what life was like on the NHS front line
(5,455)2 1352
Putin’s People/Catherine Belton
(Wm Collins £9.99) How Putin and his KGB entourage
seized power in Russia and turned on the West (4,835)183
The Comfort Book/Matt Haig
(Canongate £9.99) Aphorisms, stories and
meditations that offer comfort in hard times (3,700)724
The Power of Geography/Tim Marshall
(Elliott & Thompson £9.99) A study of ten regions
that could define global politics in the future (2,770)3265
Good Vibes, Good Life/Vex King
(Hay House £10.99) How positive thinking, self-love
and overcoming fear lead to lasting happiness (2,605)41096
Atomic Habits/James Clear
(Random House £16.99) The minuscule changes
that can grow into life-altering outcomes (2,570)6327
The Power of Hope/Kate Garraway
(Penguin £8.99) The TV and radio presenter on the
impact Covid-19 has had on her family (2,490)11 28
Neglected/Cathy Glass
(HarperCollins £7.99) The story of a boy placed
into care at just two-and-a-half years old (2,460)869
Empire of Pain/Patrick Radden Keefe
(Picador £9.99) The story of the Sackler dynasty
and the family’s role in the opioid epidemic (2,175)5410
The Complete Maus/Art Spiegelman
(Penguin £16.99) A cartoonist’s chronicle of his
father’s experience as a Holocaust survivor (2,030)—3BOOKS
being the world’s largest
democracy, yet Narendra
Modi has consolidated his
position through virulent
anti-Muslim rhetoric and
bearing down on all
independent institutions.
These characters figure
prominently in this timely
and somewhat bleak book
by Gideon Rachman. He has
assembled a rogues’ gallery
of contemporary political
leaders who delight in their
personality cults and
challenges to liberal norms
and the rule of law.
Previously with The
Economist and now chief
foreign affairs columnist for
the Financial Times, Rachman
has been well placed to
observe their rise and has
often interviewed them or
their close associates. He has a
journalist’s eye for the telling
quote combined with a sharp
analysis of the factors that
enabled them to achieve
power and hold on to it.All this is far removed from
the western ideal of a liberal
democracy, in which contrary
views are expressed openly,
governments are challenged
and voters decide in free
elections whether leaders stay
in office. Alarmingly it is the
Putin-Xi model that appears to
be on the rise. Xi inherited an
authoritarian system and
made it more so, but Putin
took a country apparently
becoming more liberal and
turned it into an autocracy.
In Hungary, another
former communist state,
Viktor Orban has become an
ideologist for “illiberal
democracy”. In the
Philippines Rodrigo Duterte
promised a “war on drugs” if
elected, urging people to kill
addicts and dealers. In the
first six months of his
government, 7,000 people
were killed, while in Brazil in
2018 Jair Bolsonaro swept to
power using crude and violent
language. India lays claim toPOLITICS
Lawrence Freedman
The Age of the Strongman
How the Cult of the Leader
Threatens Democracy around
the World by Gideon Rachman
Bodley Head £20 pp288
Not long before the start of
Russia’s invasion of Ukraine,
Vladimir Putin met with the
Chinese president, Xi Jinping,
in Beijing. In a classic example
of vice paying tribute to
virtue, their post-summit
communiqué spoke
eloquently of the importance
of democracy. They also
insisted that individual
states must find a form of
democracy appropriate to
their needs; in their case, one
compatible with eliminating
opponents and controlling the
judiciary and the media to
ensure they can stay in power
for the indefinite future.
JAMES COWENIn a series of brief but pithy
pen portraits he outlines the
shared characteristics of these
rogues. They energise their
popular base by drawing onnationalist themes, mocking
global elites, condemning
liberalism as decadent and
priding themselves on saying
what ordinary people are
supposedly thinking.
It is especially depressing
to note how many of these
characters were cast early in
their careers as moderates
and modernisers. Orban was
a student activist during the
dying days of the communist
regime. Turkey’s president,
Recep Erdogan, was hailed as
the man to pioneer al She’s still got it — the
much-loved octogenarian
novelist Anne Tyler has been
writing since the Sixties, and
her 24th novel, French Braid,
has jumped straight into the
bestsellers.
l Since its move to the New
York Times website, the hit
online game Wordle has
dwindled in popularity, with
players complaining that the
words have become harder.
Some have even returned to
old-fashioned pen and paper
— as Wordle Challenge, an
analogue version of the
game, enters the manuals list.
The lists are prepared by and
the data is supplied by (and
copyrighted to) Nielsen BookScan,
and are taken from the TCM for
the week ending 26/03/22.
Figures shown are sales for
the seven-day period.
Rogues’
gallery
Donald
Trump, Jair
Bolsonaro,
Xi Jinping
and Vladimir
PutinWhat makes them tick?
It’s alarming how many modern strongmen began life as moderates
Johnson is
there as he has
elements of
the strongman
24 3 April 2022