Dua Lipa’s 2026 Reading List

My Monthly Read for January is the brilliant new memoir by DJ, producer and songwriter Mark Ronson – Night People: How To Be A DJ In 90s New York City. As a self-confessed night person, I can’t think of a better way to start the new year than a book that celebrates the energy and joy of the dance floor.

My Monthly Read for March is Bad Feminist by Roxane Gay. It’s an essay collection that feels like a conversation with your smartest, funniest, wisest friend who’s always prepared to work things out alongside you. In some places, it’s genuinely hilarious. Others, deeply compassionate. And occasionally, totally devastating.

I first read Jerusalem at 15, studying for my English GCSEs, and Johnny ‘Rooster’ Byron has stayed with me ever since. When I finally saw legendary actor Mark Rylance perform the role onstage in 2022, it was everything I had imagined. Now, I want you to have that experience.

My monthly read for May is So Late In The Day by Irish writer Claire Keegan. Her stories are small gems: deceptively short, but they carry the heft of a great novel. This will take you less than an hour to read – but you'll want to start again the moment you finish.

I’ve long admired Kae Tempest for his body of work, which includes plays, fiction, essays, poetry, five studio albums and electrifying spoken word performances. Watching him move fluidly between forms is thrilling. Having Spent Life Seeking, his groundbreaking new novel, contains something of all of them.

Free revealed things to me about a country I know and love well. The history is so recent, but the lived experience has changed so much in just one generation. What an era to live through, what an education to share.

Madeline writes at full volume – reading Lost Lambs can feel like scrolling an overstimulating social feed. But she keeps sight of the tenderness at the heart of the Flynn family and, hidden among the drama, is a lot of truth about connection and why it matters. It’s funny, fast and intoxicating. Believe the hype.

Martyr! fizzes with chaotic energy and a thirst for life that is at odds with Cyrus’s obsession with death. It’s also very funny, with Cyrus playing ‘good person drag’ as a medical actor performing pain for cash, and Lisa Simpson making a cameo in long dream-sequence dialogues.