Published Date:
There Is Only Narrative is a programme run by London Writers Centre in partnership with the Eve White Literary Agency, which aims to find and develop new non-fiction writers from diverse backgrounds. As part of the programme, we asked agents Eve White and Ludo Cinelli to share the non-fiction books that have inspired them.
There Is Only Narrative Competition is open for applications until Tuesday 23 June 2026, 5pm. Find more information and whether you’re eligible to apply on our Project page.
We love narrative non-fiction. It can cover a vast array of topics, themes and genres. It’s often interdisciplinary, blending everything from history to hobbies, memoir to nature writing, travelogue to journalism. It also feels like a naturally inclusive, open and creative area of the market, one that is ever-brimming with ideas. There really can and should be something for everyone.
But what makes us agents fall in love with a work of narrative non-fiction in the first place?
Agenting is a subjective business, so saying ‘great writing’ may not be particularly helpful here. What one reader counts as ‘great’ might simply not chime with another.
Perhaps more usefully, we could say that we love books that have a strong sense of purpose. Books written by an author who knows their subject inside out, whether through lived experience or academic or professional expertise. Books by authors that have something incisive or original to say, and who have thought carefully about how to get that message across in the clearest, most gripping and impactful way. This originality could come in many forms: exploring new research, revising or debunking preconceived ideas. Or it could be approaching a topic from a viewpoint not previously considered, giving voice to a perspective, experience or community under-represented in the publishing world.
To give an idea of the kind of narrative nonfiction that we love at the Eve White Literary Agency, we have each selected a handful of books that brilliantly demonstrate that sense of purpose and variety. All of them are from authors who write engaging, thought-provoking prose and who are uniquely placed to write these particular books. You’ll find titles that display passion and expertise, niche hobbies and common experience, the everyday and the extraordinary, humour and heartbreak, personal journeys of self-discovery and deep-dives into our shared past and humanity. We hope you love them too!
My Mad Fat Diary by Rae Earl
Eve: It’s 1989 and Rae is, in her words, a fat, boy-mad girl living in a council house with her single mum and going (on a government scheme for clever kids) to a private school in local Stamford. It will speak to anyone who’s ever been a confused and lonely teenager who clashes with their mother, takes themselves very seriously and has no idea how hilarious they are.
When Rae was a broadcaster, she showed her colleague the diary she’d written as a 17-year-old. He suggested she read some of it out on their radio show and the audience couldn’t get enough of it. She decided to type it out and try to get it published. It was very early in my career as an agent, and I was so pleased that she’d decided to send it to me. I couldn’t put it down.
It was adapted as a TV series which has run to three seasons and is still showing on E4 with Sharon Rooney playing Rae.
Ancient by Luke Barley
Ludo: A reading of the past, present and future of Britain’s ancient woodland.
Luke approached the agency with a different idea to the book that was published, but it was immediately clear to us that he was someone to take seriously. As a senior advisor to the National Trust on woodland management, he is an active expert in his field and writes beautiful, engaging prose while having something important and original to say.
We thoroughly enjoyed shaping the proposal together into what would become Ancient, which sold in a nine-way auction. The book was released in March 2026 and has been widely praised, with The Guardian writing, “with clear-sighted passion and lyrical prose, Barley reveals what we stand to gain, as individuals and as a society, by rekindling our ancient connection with these special places.”
The Stopping Places by Damian Le Bas
Eve: I’d always been interested in nomadic people and, about ten years ago, I was sitting in the office wondering whether it would be possible to be nomadic in 21st century Britain. I asked my assistant, Kitty, to see if she could find a writer for this subject. She found the journalist Damian Le Bas, and we invited him to come and meet us. He loved the idea, bought an old transit van, put a bed and some simple cooking equipment inside and set off for a year.
Following the hand-made maps given him by his great-grandmother, who’d lived on the road, he wrote the most beautiful memoir about all the things that this journey brought up—his Gypsy heritage, his Oxford University education and where he really belonged.
Things We Found in the Ground by Eleanor Bruce and Lucilla Gray
Ludo: The book sees two young women, cousins from opposite sides of the world, bond over a shared hobby, discovering the history beneath their feet and much more about themselves along the way.
When we first met Ellie and Lucie, we knew we had to work with them: their enthusiasm for what they do is so infectious. From the outside, the world of metal detecting might seem niche, isolating and exclusionary. In Things We Found in the Ground, Ellie and Lucie bust this myth wide open, breaking the mould and showing that if you’re passionate about something, there is a place for you, and you can and should pursue it.
It’s a joy to spend time with Ellie and Lucie on the page, as they chart their journey into a compelling narrative, delving into the history of their finds and opening up to one another about their own experiences of self-discovery, including neurodivergence, queerness and Lucie’s Maori heritage.
In the Dream House by Carmen Maria Machado
Ludo: One of my favourite recent memoirs follows an emotionally gruelling and physically abusive relationship, but ultimately it is a tender and moving story of self-knowledge.
The inventiveness of Machado’s prose extends to the styles she writes in. In an Oulipo-like stroke of genius, each chapter is written in a different narrative tradition, drawing on fairy tales, genre stories, and meta-textual games like choose-your-own adventure. There is a lightness to her blend of registers and modes that keeps readers engaged in spite of the darkness of this subject matter. Machado challenges stereotypes of LGBTQ+ people as only victims, interrogates herself as much as her abuser and the conditions of her abuse, and feels like one of the most idiosyncratic books of the last decade.
A Thread of Violence by Mark O’Connell
Ludo: A common criticism of the founding work of true crime, In Cold Blood by Truman Capote, is the author’s reluctance to write himself into the story; a failure to question why he is so drawn to the scene of a grisly multiple-murder and its perpetrators, and whether a book about them might be complicit in amplifying their violence in some way.
O’Connell centres these questions in this gripping, uncomfortable read. After the release of Malcolm Macartur, an aristocrat who pled guilty to two largely unexplained murders in a high-profile 1980s case, O’Connell stalks the streets of Dublin to find him and seek answers. And though he charms Macarthur into giving him unprecedented access to his life story, it lands him right in the ethical pitfalls he is so concerned with avoiding. The quandaries of O’Connell writing this book are just as morbidly fascinating as the story it tells.
Eve White and Ludo Cinelli make up part of the Agents team at the Eve White Literary Agency, a UK-based literary agency representing internationally published authors.
Published: 8 June 2026
