It is difficult, if not impossible, to systematically identify ten books that have been influential over a professional lifetime, not least since many have probably exerted their influence in long-forgotten ways: part of that semantic sediment laid down by protracted reading (and conversation). However, I do know that George Orwell was the first serious writer whom I read ‘of my own free will’ and I know that I would not wish to be without the works of Anthony Burgess, Albert Camus, Bruce Chatwin, Don DeLillo, Graham Greene, Henning Mankell or W.G. Sebald. I can remember that books on Buddhism sustained me through senior house officer jobs in a number of medical specialties (trying to focus, single-mindedly, on the task in hand rather than my tiredness or distraction), and I suspect that the metaphors of my thought and speech had already been much influenced by exposure to the Bible. Here, I focus on those books that have informed the way I think about psychiatry right now and how it might be practised.