Four excellent books to get your teeth into while you remain holed up

Whether you’re going on a staycation (or even an actual holiday) or remaining holed up at home. Merryn Somerset Webb has four perfect books to educate and entertain you.

Man reading an e-book
(Image credit: © Getty)

Like much of the population I have been reading mainly unchallenging murder mysteries for the past three months, interspersed with the odd romance, of course. But I have also made some effort to keep up with the relentless stream of finance and political books still being published – and to think about the few it might be worth reading on your staycation or during your quarantine.

You will be pleased to hear that most can be happily ignored, being too long (almost all non-fiction books would, I’m afraid, be better as pamphlets), too complicated, too repetitive and too inclined to manipulate evidence to make a political point.

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Merryn Somerset Webb

Merryn Somerset Webb started her career in Tokyo at public broadcaster NHK before becoming a Japanese equity broker at what was then Warburgs. She went on to work at SBC and UBS without moving from her desk in Kamiyacho (it was the age of mergers).

After five years in Japan she returned to work in the UK at Paribas. This soon became BNP Paribas. Again, no desk move was required. On leaving the City, Merryn helped The Week magazine with its City pages before becoming the launch editor of MoneyWeek in 2000 and taking on columns first in the Sunday Times and then in 2009 in the Financial Times

Twenty years on, MoneyWeek is the best-selling financial magazine in the UK. Merryn was its Editor in Chief until 2022. She is now a senior columnist at Bloomberg and host of the Merryn Talks Money podcast -  but still writes for Moneyweek monthly. 

Merryn is also is a non executive director of two investment trusts – BlackRock Throgmorton, and the Murray Income Investment Trust.