Glitz, glamour gorgeous paintings: Find the perfect present with the best picture books of 2025

This is a rival to Cher’s own Memoir, volume 2, only with more pictures and fewer words. Cher is a phenomenon, as renowned for her longevity as her performing skills, but this book is essentially a pictoral history of her many incarnations, as Sonny’s wife, as a light entertainer of the old school, as a power balladeer with a voice like a foghorn, and as Meryl Streep’s mum in Mamma Mia 2. ‘Given her powerful voice, it’s not easy for Cher to blend in,’ writes Zaleski. Did you know she sang back-up on the Righteous Brothers’ You’ve Lost That Lovin’ Feelin’? I didn’t, and this book is full of such fascinating snippets of information, as well as a thousand photos of her in a thousand different wigs. Wig-tastic!

Few jewellers are as celebrated as Cartier, and in this book you see why. All the signature designs are here: the Tank watch, the Love bracelet, the Trinity ring, plus some photos of the Duke and Duchess of Windsor, who were loyal customers. ‘The jeweller of kings and the king of jewellers,’ said the Duke, obviously gagging for a freebie. The book also studies the company’s ‘embrace of progress and modernity’: we see Tyler The Creator’s eight Cartier watches, all of them telling different times. There’s even the tiara worn by the current Princess of Wales on her wedding day, which you wouldn’t say no to.

Like many books here, this does what it says on the tin. All manner of modern treehouses are depicted in this lavish tome, from the shambolic and homemade to the architectural and eyewateringly expensive. Siebeck reveals Emperor Caligula commissioned an arboreal banquet hall, while in the 19th century, the Parisian suburbs boasted Les Guingettes de Robinson, where patrons dined among the branches. Many of the modern treehouses are staggering, permanent constructions. Some are described as an ‘interactive educational experience’, intended to bring young visitors closer to the forest. Some are actually holiday homes that can presumably be hired for a small fortune. Probably cheaper to buy this book.

Here’s one of Taschen’s enormous volumes on a giant of fashion, Valentino Garavani.

For half a century he dominated haute couture, designing dresses for Elizabeth Taylor, Audrey Hepburn and Jackie Kennedy, and although he retired in 2007, his brand continues to thrive.

This book has been assiduously researched and the photographs of luscious models wearing astonishing gowns take your breath away.

Valentino himself is pictured elegantly suited, as camp as a row of tents, and with more hair than Marge Simpson. One interview reveals that he used to go skiing with Roger Moore, and is ‘almost sick when I look at a Gauguin painting’. Even at £100, this book is amazing value for besotted fashionistas.

If my mother were alive, she would willingly hand over years of her life to own this book.

It’s exactly what you think it would be: loads of photos of dogs, with a few photos of country houses and the canine-crazed aristos who live in them.

Some of these dogs are working dogs, and others are purely decorative. F. Scott Fitzgerald was right: the very rich are different from you and me, and for one thing they have much prettier dogs. There are no mutts here, just pure-bred uber-dogs, frolicking on the grass or on staircases wide enough to accommodate a small army.

It’s actually a lovely book: charmingly written, magnificently photographed and a joy for all seasons.

This is garden porn, pure and simple, with 100 of the most beautiful gardens in these islands pictorially recorded for your delectation and enlightenment.

Most of the gardens are formal and very beautifully designed, but there are ad hoc gardens here too, one or two adopting more random or shambolic methods of planting, which pleases me greatly. But as the uncredited writer of all this avers, ‘this treasury of magnificent gardens will be the inspiration for endless days out’, and both postcodes and opening hours are included in the text.

There are loads of good ideas too, for those of us tilling our more modest patches of land…

Another massive book – industrial hydraulic equipment would come in useful when trying to lift it, and a fork-lift truck would certainly be a help – and this one is about fashion’s enfant terrible, Jean-Paul Gaultier.

Gaultier is now 73 and retired but this splendid volume takes us pictorially through his eminent career.

Skirts for men, Madonna’s conical bra, trans models a-go-go: they’re all here, with countless photos of amazing frocks and often ridiculous hairstyles. These aren’t exactly clothes that are meant to be worn, more meant to be seen and marvelled at. Bring back Eurotrash!

This sumptuous volume is the tenth in the Remembering Wildlife series. Founded in 2015 by British wildlife photographer Margot Raggett, the series has two purposes: one to raise awareness of the plight of each species, the other to use profits from sales to support organisations working to protect them. This book features some of the best images from the collection, and also loads of photos of pangolins, one of the least known mammals on Earth and yet the most trafficked: more than a million have been taken from the wild in the last decade. (They are poached for their scales and meat.) The photos, all donated by top photographers, are as spectacular as ever.

This impressive piece of work is based on a series of YouTube lectures. James Payne isn’t an art historian by trade, but a very well informed amateur on a mission to explain great works of art in their social, political and aesthetic contexts, with loads of good stories.

I didn’t know, for instance, that when Monet and Pissarro visited London, their main object of attention was Turner’s huge, almost abstract canvasses in the National Gallery. So Turner wasn’t just Britain’s greatest Romantic painter, he was also the father of impressionism.

The critics had reservations, though. The Morning Chronicle called his Rain, Steam and Speed ‘probably the most insane and the most magnificent of all these prodigious compositions’, which now seems like a compliment, but didn’t in 1844.

There are nearly a billion cats roaming the globe, and here esteemed photographer Tim Flach takes a look at some of them. There are angry cats, silly cats, swimming cats and amazingly cute cats.

My favourite series shows the progress of a newborn kitten from eight days old to eight weeks old, from being blind, deaf and helpless to fully functional and almost certainly peckish.

There are even human brain scans which allow Flach to mark how cuteness of kittens impacts us. This is a book of some brilliance, and my grumpy 15-year-old cat liked it nearly as much as I did.

Demarchelier was a giant of fashion photography, who died in 2022, and this book, roughly the size of a small car, is his epitaph.

He was 'known for his ability to capture a subject's beauty and charm in a natural way, often without ornate settings', and the front cover features Christy Turlington, naked as the day she was born, with a white mouse on her shoulder.

There are more photos of beautiful women sometimes draped in various forms of animal life. Demarchelier, you get the impression, was more interested in the model than what she was wearing.

This is the most condensed study of human beauty I think I have ever seen, and well worth its impressive price tag.