Beth Orton has spent more than three decades making music that blurs the boundaries between folk, rock, hip-hop and electronica. Born in Norfolk in 1970, Orton moved to East London as a teenager and initially pursued acting before finding her way into London’s underground music scene. By the mid-1990s, she was collaborating with artists like William Orbit and the Chemical Brothers, developing a blend of acoustic songwriting and electronic sound that came to be known as “folktronica.”
Her breakthrough arrived with Trailer Park in 1996, followed by the BRIT Award-winning Central Reservation in 1999 and the UK Top 10 album Daybreaker in 2002. Over the years, Orton has continued to move between electronic experimentation and more stripped-back songwriting, from the acoustic-leaning Sugaring Season to the atmospheric Weather Alive, an album she began developing around an old upright piano she bought at Camden Market.
Ever an avid reader, Orton served as a judge for the 2025 International Booker Prize, and marked the occasion by sharing the books of her life with The Week. From Rachel Cusk’s unsparing examination of motherhood to Marcel Proust’s immersive meditation on memory and sensation, find her favorite books below, and explore the reading lists of other iconic musicians here.
Beth Orton’s Reading List
Self-Portrait by Celia Paul
“In this mysterious yet clear-eyed memoir, the artist tells her life through the painting of loved ones, immortalising shared time with a graceful generosity. I found this book in the Aldeburgh bookshop, and Paul’s writing, like her painting, conjured the landscape beneath my feet.” -BO
“This was one of the first books that opened the door to shitting on the hallowed ground of being a mother. It tore through me, a conversation that I needed to have with myself but wasn’t prepared for. Its true weight is in how Cusk describes the guilt inherent in trying to be both a loving mother and an artist.” -BO
“I am calling this novel one of my favourite Miranda July films, as everything she writes translates into technicolour, and her dialogue is properly funny. All Fours often hides behind seeming off the cuff, but it is unfathomably deep, a work of heartbreaking genius.” -BO
“The first book to inform me of the Holocaust, it was the start of a lifelong education that continues to this day, inspiring some of my own most famous novels. It remains one of the most upsetting but important narratives ever committed to print. Essential reading.” -BO
“I started listening to Swann’s Way before the 2020 lockdown. As I lay awake in a world as still as I’ve ever known it, the sensory nature of Proust’s writing calmed me and carried me gently through uncertain nights. Some of the hypnagogic state of that time is recorded into ‘Weather Alive’, the record I ended up making.” -BO
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