Happy 2026! And off we sally into another year of non-fiction publishing. To get myself in the right frame of mind for these “New Year, New You” musings, I went for a run this morning. Truth be told it was more of a short plod, but still in keeping with one of the more compelling themes from this month’s Health and Fitness offering, namely the importance of moving about as much as we can.

As a freelance writer, mostly chained to my desk and screen, this feels more crucial to remember the older I get (and I have just celebrated a big birthday). So in this vein I enjoyed choreographer Wayne McGregor’s assertion that movement is a route to physical intelligence in his book We Are Movement: Unlocking Your Physical Intelligence (Bloomsbury). And for anyone who would like to take up running but is nervous about whether it is for them, I highly recommend Sabrina Pace-Humphreys’ Start Where You Are: The Beginner’s 5k Running Guide for Women (Bloomsbury Sport).

It is also a resolution of mine not to sweat the perpetual to-do list quite as much and find more time for R&R (that is reading and relaxation, obvs). To that end, Overwhelmed: Ways to Take the Pressure Off by Claudia Hammond (Canongate) provided an excellent primer. And in common with so many others, I would like to spend less time scrolling and more time engaged in real world occupations. Attensity! A Manifesto of the Attention Liberation Movement from the Friends of Attention collective (Particular) is an excellent reminder of what deserves our attention, what does not, and why.

Lest we get too self-absorbed, let us also look outwards at the state of the world, something that the best of journalism and non-fiction publishing continues to help us do. No pretending these are cheerful times: as evidenced by the latest Peter Apps book for example – The Next World War: The New Age of Global Conflict and the Fight to Stop It (Wildfire) – or Edward Stourton’s Made in America: The Dark History That Led to Donald Trump (Torva).

But in investigative reporting we must trust, especially when it is of the quality of Oliver Bullough’s Everybody Loves Our Dollars: How Money Laundering Won (Weidenfeld & Nicolson), in which he shows why there has never been a better time to be a criminal, and what we might do to change this parlous state of affairs.

As part of my work as a Royal Literary Fund Fellow, supporting writing skills in the community and workplace through the RLF’s Writing for Life programme, I have been leading a four-part Writing for Self-Expression course for people with mental and physical health conditions who are being supported by an NHS Recovery College. Each week, we read and discuss two poems together, often on themes of resilience and self-care, and then the participants are invited to respond to them through free writing. It is both astonishing and humbling to witness how writing can provide a genuinely transformative way to overcome trauma and promote personal growth.

All power then to my Book of the Month: Art Cure: The Science of How the Arts Transform Our Health by Daisy Fancourt (Cornerstone Press), which marshals a huge amount of scientific evidence to show that meaningful participation in some form of artistic expression is good for everyone and can be a powerful tool in unlocking both health and happiness.

And note that “meaningful”. As Fancourt makes clear, while online arts opportunities are proliferating, screens may be the ultra-processed foods of arts engagement, negating or diluting the positive effects. It is an argument not unfamiliar to those of us who instinctively prefer physical books, where possible.

If you have been blessed with easy access to the arts all your life as I have, then lucky you. Now it is time for us all to – as Melvyn Bragg puts it in his quote in support of Art Cure – “make a stronger, more urgent case for placing the arts at the centre of our communities”.

January 2026: Non-fiction Previews