The Big Jubilee Read is a 2022 campaign to promote reading for pleasure and to celebrate the

Platinum Jubilee of Elizabeth II The Platinum Jubilee of Elizabeth II was the international celebration in 2022 marking the 70th anniversary of the accession of Queen Elizabeth II on 6 February 1952, the first British monarch to ever celebrate one. In the United Kingdom, the ...

. A list of 70 books by

Commonwealth A commonwealth is a traditional English term for a political community founded for the common good. Historically, it has been synonymous with "republic". The noun "commonwealth", meaning "public welfare, general good or advantage", dates from the ...

authors, 10 from each decade of

Elizabeth II Elizabeth II (Elizabeth Alexandra Mary; 21 April 1926 – 8 September 2022) was Queen of the United Kingdom and other Commonwealth realms from 6 February 1952 until her death in 2022. She was queen regnant of 32 sovereign states during ...

's reign, was selected by a panel of experts and announced by the

BBC #REDIRECT BBC #REDIRECT BBC Here i going to introduce about the best teacher of my life b BALAJI sir. He is the precious gift that I got befor 2yrs . How has helped and thought all the concept and made my success in the 10th board exam. ...

...

The Reading Agency The Reading Agency is a charity registered in England and Wales which promotes the benefits of reading among children and adults in UK, working with partners including public libraries, colleges and prisons. Operations Sue Wilkinson served as t ...

Selection process

Arts Council

Libraries Connected

Booksellers Association

The organisers hope that the project will "celebrate the joy of reading and the power that it has to connect people across the country and among nations". Nineteen of the books are winners of the

Booker Prize The Booker Prize, formerly known as the Booker Prize for Fiction (1969–2001) and the Man Booker Prize (2002–2019), is a Literary award, literary prize awarded each year for the best novel written in English and published in the United King ...

. Most of the books are novels written in English, but there are also poetry collections such as ''

Death of a Naturalist ''Death of a Naturalist'' (1966) is a collection of poems written by Seamus Heaney, who received the 1995 Nobel Prize in Literature. The collection was Heaney's first major published volume, and includes ideas that he had presented at meetings o ...

'' and short story collections including '' The Boat'', while ''One Moonlit Night'' was published in Welsh as ''

Un Nos Ola Leuad ''Un Nos Ola Leuad'' (''One Moonlit Night'') is a novel written by Welsh writer Caradog Prichard. It was first published in 1961. It has been translated into English by Philip Mitchell. Plot The novel is an account of childhood, and depicts ...

'', ''

Le Procès-Verbal ''Le Procès-Verbal'' (English title: ''The Interrogation'') is the debut novel of French Nobel laureate writer J. M. G. Le Clézio, about a troubled man named Adam Pollo who "struggles to contextualize what he sees" and "to negotiate often distur ...

'' and '' Our Lady of the Nile'' were originally in French, and ''

Shuggie Bain ''Shuggie Bain'' is the debut novel by Scottish-American writer Douglas Stuart, published in 2020. It tells the story of the youngest of three children, Shuggie, growing up with his alcoholic mother Agnes in 1980s post-industrial working-class ...

'' is in English but with dialogue in Scots.

The list

The list was published by the BBC on 18 April 2022. ''The full list''

Commonwealth nations by number of books

Where an author is given two countries of origin in the above list, 0.5 is given to each country.

Omissions and other issues

Commentators discussed several omission of potential titles:

J. R. R. Tolkien John Ronald Reuel Tolkien (, ; 3 January 1892 – 2 September 1973) was an English writer and philology, philologist. He was the author of the high fantasy works ''The Hobbit'' and ''The Lord of the Rings''. From 1925 to 1945, Tolkien was ...

's ''

The Lord of the Rings ''The Lord of the Rings'' is an epic high-fantasy novel by English author and scholar J. R. R. Tolkien. Set in Middle-earth, intended to be Earth at some time in the distant past, the story began as a sequel to Tolkien's 1937 children's boo ...

'' (ranked number 1 in the 2003

The Big Read The Big Read was a survey on books carried out by the BBC in the United Kingdom in 2003, where over three-quarters of a million votes were received from the British public to find the nation's best-loved novel of all time. The year-long survey wa ...

);

J. K. Rowling Joanne Rowling ( "rolling"; born 31 July 1965), also known by her pen name J. K. Rowling, is a British author and Philanthropy, philanthropist. She wrote ''Harry Potter'', a seven-volume children's fantasy series published from 1997 to ...

Harry Potter ''Harry Potter'' is a series of seven fantasy literature, fantasy novels written by British author J. K. Rowling. The novels chronicle the lives of a young Magician (fantasy), wizard, Harry Potter (character), Harry Potter, and his friends ...

books;

Terry Pratchett Sir Terence David John Pratchett (28 April 1948 – 12 March 2015) was an English humourist, satirist, and author of fantasy novels, especially comical works. He is best known for his ''Discworld'' series of 41 novels. Pratchett's first nov ...

's ''

Discworld ''Discworld'' is a comic fantasy"Humorous Fantasy" in David Pringle, ed., ''The Ultimate Encyclopedia of Fantasy'' (pp.31-33). London, Carlton,2006. book series written by the English author Terry Pratchett, set on the Discworld, a flat pla ...

'' series;

Philip Pullman Sir Philip Nicholas Outram Pullman (born 19 October 1946) is an English writer. His books include the fantasy trilogy ''His Dark Materials'' and ''The Good Man Jesus and the Scoundrel Christ'', a fictionalised biography of Jesus. In 2008, ''The ...

's ''

His Dark Materials ''His Dark Materials'' is a trilogy of fantasy novels by Philip Pullman consisting of '' Northern Lights'' (1995; published as ''The Golden Compass'' in North America), ''The Subtle Knife'' (1997), and ''The Amber Spyglass'' (2000). It follows ...

'' trilogy,

Doris Lessing Doris May Lessing (; 22 October 1919 – 17 November 2013) was a British-Zimbabwean novelist. She was born to British parents in Iran, where she lived until 1925. Her family then moved to Southern Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe), where she remain ...

's ''

The Golden Notebook ''The Golden Notebook'' is a 1962 novel by the British writer Doris Lessing. Like her two books that followed, it enters the realm of what Margaret Drabble in ''The Oxford Companion to English Literature'' called Lessing's "inner space fiction"; ...

''; and the work of

Dick Francis Richard Stanley Francis (31 October 1920 – 14 February 2010) was a British steeplechase jockey and crime writer whose novels centre on horse racing in England. After wartime service in the RAF, Francis became a full-time jump-jockey, winni ...

, reportedly one of the Queen's favourite authors. The inclusion of Northern Irish writer

Seamus Heaney Seamus Justin Heaney (; 13 April 1939 – 30 August 2013) was an Irish poet, playwright and translator. He received the 1995 Nobel Prize in Literature.

was explained by the fact that when he wrote ''Death of a Naturalist'' he was living in the UK and published by an English publisher; Heaney identified as an

Irish nationalist Irish nationalism is a nationalist political movement which, in its broadest sense, asserts that the people of Ireland should govern Ireland as a sovereign state. Since the mid-19th century, Irish nationalism has largely taken the form of cu ...

and had previously objected to his inclusion in ''

The Penguin Book of Contemporary British Poetry ''The Penguin Book of Contemporary British Poetry'' is a poetry anthology edited by Blake Morrison and Andrew Motion, and published in 1982 by Penguin Books. Shortly after its publication, Morrison acknowledged the criticisms made towards th ...

''. In ''

The Telegraph ''The Telegraph'', ''Daily Telegraph'', ''Sunday Telegraph'' and other variant names are popular names for newspapers. Newspapers with these titles include: Australia * ''The Telegraph'' (Adelaide), a newspaper in Adelaide, South Australia, publ ...

'',

Allison Pearson Judith Allison Pearson (née Lobbett; born 22 July 1960) is a British columnist and author. Pearson has worked for British newspapers such as the '' Daily Mail'', '' The Independent'', the ''Evening Standard'', '' The Daily Telegraph'', and ...

called it a You'll take your medicine and like it' kind of list compiled by people who were scared stiff of not being diverse enough." Similarly, in ''The Article'', David Herman complained: "If you like Hornblower or

James Bond The ''James Bond'' series focuses on a fictional British Secret Service agent created in 1953 by writer Ian Fleming, who featured him in twelve novels and two short-story collections. Since Fleming's death in 1964, eight other authors have ...

, witches and hobbits, great children's literature, popular poetry or drama, The Big Jubilee Read doesn't care. What it does care about is

post-colonial Postcolonialism is the critical academic study of the cultural, political and economic legacy of colonialism and imperialism, focusing on the impact of human control and exploitation of colonized people and their lands. More specifically, it is a ...

, ideally non-white, literature."

References

External links

* ''Lists of titles, by decade, with cover image for each title and a paragraph about the decade in Commonwealth literature; links to a book description for every title'' {{Elizabeth II Platinum Jubilee of Elizabeth II BBC Top book lists Book promotion Literacy