Make it Count: 9 Lessons for Living a Life to be Proud of, by Benjamin Ferencz, with Nadia Khomami. (Also titled Parting Words)

Available on Amazon and Kindle as eBook and (recommended as) AudioBook

What 103 years of life experience can teach us about how to make the most of the lives we’ve been given. A truly Inspirational handbook for a good life from a man that grew up as a poor immigrant in America during the Great Depression, yet worked his way up to prosecuting Nazis at the Nuremberg trials and later fought to establish the International Criminal Court to hold war criminals to account the world over. Nine humbling, compelling and life-affirming lessons we would all do well to read or listen to.

Endurance, by Alfred Lansing.  

Available from Cumberland Libraries.

NOTE: Many different versions by other authors also available.

An authentic record of how Sir Ernest Shackleton and his crew tackled their incredible fight against adversity arising from their voyage to the Antarctic, begun in 1914. This version, first published in 1959, includes many fascinating details that may have been filtered out of more recent studies. An engaging page-turner, an Inspiration to the Survivor in every one of us.

Long Walk to Freedom, by Nelson Mandella.

Large Illustrated version available from Cumberland Libraries, also as Audiobook on BorrowBox

Mandela’s riveting memoir, first published in 1994, is a compelling record of his lifelong struggle to achieve fairness, freedom and prosperity for his fellow citizens, and remains an Inspiration to those throughout the world striving for human rights and racial equality to the present day. The Print edition contains dozens of full colour photos, helping anchor the text in both time and place.

Growing Brave, by Donna Ashworth.

Available from Cumberland Libraries.

A powerful new collection of wisdom and poetry, helping us to find strength and courage on the days we feel lost.

Open the Book. Read. Think. Breathe. Be Inspired.

The Lady in the Van, by Alan Bennett.

Available from Cumberland Libraries, as eBook from BorrowBox and AudioBook on Kindle. (All contain some Profanities.)

The story of the itinerant Miss Shepherd, who lived in a van on Alan Bennett’s driveway from the early 1970s until her death in 1989, provokes us to reflect on two things: Can you be Inspired to stick to your strongly held principles as did Miss Shepherd, despite the hardship it brought to her life, or is the enduring compassion for her by Alan Bennett himself an Inspiration to you? Read it and see!

The Man who Couldn’t stop Drawing – the extraordinary life of Percy Kelly by Chris Wadsworth.

Fully illustrated, includes personal photographs and other archive material. Available from Cumberland Libraries.

Celebrating the Spring Exhibition of Kelly’s Industrial works at the Beacon Museum. “Drawing is as natural as walking. A piece of charcoal or chalk is like an extension of my forefinger.” To read the story of how he was celebrated by some of the highest in the land and ended up lonely and confused in a cottage in Norfolk surrounded by his beloved collection of work is to open up the mystery of the man.

Sunlight on the River: Poems About Paintings, Paintings About Poems Hardcover – Illustrated by Scott Gutterman

Available to borrow from Beacon Book Club, or through Internet Book Re-selling sites. 

Poets and the Artists share a special kind of vision – an ability to see and penetrate the very essence of their subjects.  This book features poems by writers that looked to well-known paintings for their inspiration, along with paintings by artists who based their works on poems.

Take your time and immerse yourself in the poetry, set alongside glowing illustrations of the paintings, and notice details you had never spotted before, and deepen your understanding of the picture before you.

Leonora by Elena Poniatowski 

Available on BorrowBox as eBook and in print from Amazon,

as are many of her short stories and novels.

The most famous Lancastrian-born Artist in the World – and the one you have probably never heard of – Leonora Carrington.   One of her works recently sold for $23million making her the highest selling female artist to date, out-selling her contemporaries Percy Kelly and L S Lowry many times over. The extraordinary story of her early life, her escape from Europe during WW2 and eventual re-settlement in Mexico, rubbing elbows with fellow Surrealists Max Ernst, Salvador Dalí, André Breton and Pablo Picasso along the way.

NB: Some descriptions of her mental health struggles are a hard read.

The Pinecone – the story of Sarah Losh, forgotten Romantic heroine, architect and visionary, by Jenny Uglow

Available from Cumberland Libraries.

In the village of Wreay, near Carlisle, stands the strangest and most magical church in Victorian England. This vivid, original book tells the story of its builder, Sarah Losh. Born into an old Cumbrian family, heiress to an industrial fortune, and unusual in every way.

Girl with a Pearl Earring by Tracy Chevalier

Available in Print from Cumberland Libraries and as eBook from BorrowBox

A wonderful novel, steeped in atmosphere and yet firmly rooted in the drudgery and denial of a servant’s life. Deeply revealing about the process of painting, best read with a volume of Vermeer’s paintings open beside you.