TIMES LITERARY SUPPLEMENT (June 18, 2025): In this week’s TLS, Mary Beard and Margaret Drabble are not quite getting away from it all this summer. For our summer books selection, they have picked a brace of biographies of Labour prime ministers past and present. Along with Daniel Mendelsohn’s recent translation of the Odyssey, our Classics editor chooses Alan Johnson’s biography of Harold Wilson, her mother’s favourite politician. By Martin Ivens

Summer books 2025

Twenty-four TLS writers share their summer reading

Young and damned

Three teen-centric novels arrive at a time of national soul-searching