WHO Margaret MacMillan, Warden of St. Antony's College, Oxford, and author most recently of The Uses and Abuses of History
WHAT After Tamerlane , by John Darwin; Vermeer's Hat , by Tim Brook; Netherlands , by Joseph O'Neill; Revelation , by C.J. Sansom
WHY Long flights and holidays - and I have had both recently - are wonderful for reading. I have been alternating between serious and worthy things that I feel I ought to read and novels and mysteries for sheer pleasure.
Probably a silly distinction because I am really enjoying two in the first category and am learning quite a lot from the second type - whether about cricket in New York or the vicissitudes of life with Henry VIII.
I have just read Tim Brook's engrossing Vermeer's Hat , which takes objects in Vermeer's paintings - a beaver hat or a Chinese porcelain bowl - and uses them to show how the links were expanding and growing across the world in the 17th century.
And I am partway through a fascinating book by John Darwin called After Tamerlane , which looks at the different empires in the same period and why some flourished, notably the European ones, and others - the Chinese or the Ottoman - didn't.
On the other sort of reading, I have finally read Joseph O'Neill's funny and moving Netherland , and Revelation , another in C.J. Sansom's terrific series of mysteries set in Tudor England.
No holidays coming up for a while, alas, but I am keeping Joseph Boyden's Through Black Spruce handy just in case, and Red Mandarin Dress , one of the Inspector Chen mysteries by Qiu Xiaolong.