Your Summer Reading List Sorted.
Read, Watch Back or Listen.
The Fashion Roundtable Book Club is a Substack live series and library curated specifically with you in mind. Meg Pirie has interviewed everyone from historians and archivists; to folk researchers, professors of psychobiology and epidemiology, and time travellers who explore practical, imaginative solutions to the climate and ecological crisis, as well as activist business owners working to save British manufacturing. That’s why we have your summer reading list sorted. We’ve done the hard work (as you can see from these very worn book covers!), so you don’t have to. We’ve read the books, and interviewed the amazing people behind them.
Have a bit of time? Why not read the book or watch the interview back. Short on time? All the interviews are available on the #FrontRowToFrontBenchPodcast, so you can listen on the go.
Less: Stop Buying So Much Rubbish: How Having Fewer, Better Things Can Make Us Happier by Patrick Grant
For our 5th Book Club we were joined by Patrick Grant for a special podcast episode. Patrick has a lot to say about clothes; how much we buy, how they’re valued, what they’re made from, and importantly who made them and where. His campaigning clothes brand Community Clothing supports local clothing and textile manufacturing across the UK. Patrick is an outspoken advocate for radical change in the fashion industry and this comes across perfectly in his debut book LESS which was an instant Sunday Times bestseller!
Weaving in his personal journey through fashion, clothing and the other everyday objects in his life, this is a book that celebrates craftsmanship, making things with care, buying things with thought and valuing everything we own. It explains how rethinking our relationship with clothing could kickstart a thriving new local economy bringing prosperity and hope back to places in our country that have lost out to globalisation, offshore manufacturing and to the madness of price and quantity being the only things that matter.
Charlotte Brontë’s Life Through Clothes by Eleanor Houghton
For our fourth book club, Meg Pirie interviewed Eleanor Houghton–an historian, writer, and illustrator specialising in eighteenth- and nineteenth-century dress, literature, and material culture. Eleanor is the author and illustrator of Charlotte Brontë’s Life Through Clothes, based on nine years of research into Charlotte Brontë’s surviving wardrobe.
More than 150 gowns, bonnets, shawls, corsets, parasols, and boots have outlived her, carrying traces of a woman who was braver, more vulnerable, and more connected to her time than the myths allow.
Join the very talented dress historian and author Eleanor Houghton and Meg Pirie as they delve into the Brontë archive to explore Eleanor’s fascinating material biography, ‘Charlotte Brontë’s Life Through Clothes.’
Don’t miss out on this incredible literary deep dive!
Finding Albion: Myth, Folklore and the Quest for a Hidden Britain by Zakia Sewell
For our third book club Meg Pirie and Tamara Cincik chatted with folk researcher and BBC DJ and Broadcaster, Zakia Sewell, author of ‘Finding Albion: Myth, Folklore and the Quest for a Hidden Britain’.
In this incredible debut book, long-listed for the Women’s Prize for Non-Fiction 2026, Zakia navigates the complex threads of British heritage and identity. Following the Pagan Wheel of the Year, Zakia takes us on a quest for an alternative spirit of Britain. Her journey begins in the mists of Glastonbury for the spring equinox and travels the length of Britain—from the highlands of Scotland to the rugged coast of Cornwall—all the while unearthing stories of a hidden Britain.
How to Fall in Love with the Future: A Time Traveller’s Guide to Changing the World by Rob Hopkins
Meg Pirie interviewed the formidable Rob Hopkins, author and activist for our second book club.
Through the power of Rob’s book, Meg Pirie and Rob Hopkins visit a 2030 resulting from our doing everything collectively that we could possibly have done. They explore how time travel and routing ourselves in lived experience of the future help us to map out a route to inspire change, the neuroscience behind this and the need to cultivate longing, the responsibilities that governments and organisations have to include thinkers, dreamers and artists in decision-making and Rob’s policy wishlist.
Art Cure by Daisy Fancourt
For our very first Fashion Roundtable book club Meg Pirie interviewed author Daisy Fancourt Professor of Psychobiology and Epidemiology at UCL. Daisy is the director of the World Health Organisation Collaborating Centre on Arts and Health as well as an Expert Scientific Advisor to DCMS.
Daisy has published over 250 peer-reviewed papers and her book Art Cure is a Sunday Times Best Seller and Long-listed for Women’s Prize for non-fiction.
In this special episode, discover how art can improve our health, make us happier and even help us live longer.