Jane Robinson

Jane Robinson was born in Edinburgh. She read English Language and Literature at Somerville College, Oxford and works as a full-time writer and lecturer in social history through women's eyes. Jane is a Fellow of the Royal Geographical Society, a member of the Society of Authors and founder-member of Writers in Oxford.

My favourite books of the decade are:

One of the best biographies I've ever read is Sara Wheeler's Cherry: A Life of Apsley Cherry-Garrard (2000). At its core is what Cherry himself described as 'the worst journey in the world', over the polar winter of 1911. Wheeler has me shivering with cold, and completely awe-struck, every time I read it.

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Miss Garnet's Angel by Salley Vickers (2000) is a measured, exquisitely-handled story of self-discovery, based in Venice, a city that means a great deal to me. I don't know Vickers, but recently discovered the book is dedicated to a mutual friend: someone who features in Bluestockings, and whom I much admire.

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The book I'm reading at the moment is captivating. It's The Suspicions of Mr Whicher by Kate Summerscale (2008), and combines two of my favourite genres: detective literature and social history. The author has reconstructed a sensational murder case in a minute mosaic of authentic detail, and I'm utterly engrossed.

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Ziauddin Sardar

Ziauddin Sardar (born October 31, 1951 in northern Pakistan) is a London-based Muslim scholar, critic, futurist, journalist and a prolific writer. Considered a pioneering thinker on contemporary Islam, he has been described by the Independent newspaper as 'Britain’s own polymath'. His intellectual output, published in some 45 books, ranges from the future of Islam to critiques of postmodernism, science policy, contemporary aspects of science in Muslim societies, colonialism, cultural relations, literary criticism, travel and autobiography.

My favourite books of the decade are:

William Dalrymple's The Last Moghal, an engrossing account of the life of Urdu poet and tragic emperor, Bhadur Shah Zafar, is not only his best book but also one of the best biographies of recent times.

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Empire, colonialism and liberalism have a great deal to answer for says Talal Asad in On Suicide Bombing, which is, quite simply, a work of pure genius. It is the best and most important analysis of political violence, within Islam and liberalism, one can read.

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Finally, Amartya Sen's The Idea of Justice shows that the 'arrangement focussed' approach to justice that the West seeks to impose on the rest of the world is anything but just. To build a truly just world, we need a 'realisation-focused approach' that concentrates on actual outcomes. It is a truly monumental work - the best and the most important analysis of justice and equity we are likely to see for a long time.

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James Shapiro

James Shapiro is Professor of English and Comparative Literature at Columbia University in New York. He is the author of Shakespeare and the Jews, 1599: A Year in the Life of William Shakespeare (for which he won the BBC Samuel Johnson Prize in 2006) and most recently Contested Will.

My favourite books of the decade are:

There's no question which book of the last decade I found most moving: Rob Sheffield's overlooked Love Is a Mix Tape, a haunting memoir of a young man coming to terms with the sudden death of his young wife, and how the music that had brought them together helped pull him together. I read it the year I was one of the judges of the National Book Award and in truth it should have won.

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The book I most wished to have written was The Lodger: Shakespeare on Silver Street; Charles Nicholl is a great storyteller and an amazing researcher, and his latest effort-in which he pieces together the time Shakespeare spent as a lodger in Jacobean London--is a gem.

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And the book I learned the most from? That one's easy: Alan Stewart's fascinating Shakespeare's Letters.

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