If a room without books is a room without a soul, then a coffee table without coffee table books is just a plank of wood taking up space in your living room. To address this problem immediately, check out our list of brilliantly written, beautifully designed and – crucially – very big and heavy tomes that will add character to your home, captivate your guests and give your arms a good workout in the process.

There have probably been more books devoted to The Beatles than any other act in pop music history. So it says something that The Lyrics managed to capture the imagination of fans when it was released ahead of last Christmas. A collaboration between Sir Paul McCartney and the Irish poet Mr Paul Muldoon, it retraces the former’s creative output with both surprising candour and sumptuous attention to detail.

Mr Jacob Gallagher has balanced astute insights into the world of men’s fashion with a witty and accessible voice for years now as an editor and columnist at The Wall Street Journal, making his collaboration with luxury coffee-table book supremos Phaidon a no-brainer. Charting 200 years of men’s style in good old A-Z format, it’s perfect for dipping into for inspiration ahead of your next wardrobe refresh.

Nothing in menswear gets fetishised quite like the sneaker, something designer and Complex magazine founder Mr Marc Ecco gamefully reflects in this glorious guide to a key part of hypebeast history. If you love nothing more than staring at box-fresh trainers and want to know the difference between your Air Max 1s and your Achilles Lows, this is the doorstopper for you.

In 2019, American writer and curator Mr Antwaun Sargent released The New Black Vanguard: Photography Between Art And Fashion to much acclaim. In this sequel of sorts, he casts an expert eye over a new generation of artists of African descent who are shaping the contemporary art scene in the US. Full of beautiful reproductions and insightful interviews with creators, curators and other industry expert.

Not many coffee-table books cause a scandal, but this classic early work from photographer and director Mr Larry Clark did just that back in 1971. An unflinching look at youth culture in Oklahoma, its beautiful but shocking mix of sex, drugs and violence helped bring about a generational reckoning moment in the US. Clark would go on to make the iconic 1995 movie Kids, which terrified American parents in equal measure.

A photographer with a legendary knack for getting the most famous people in the world to let their guard down, this revised edition of her classic 2008 book sees Ms Annie Leibovitz address aspiring photographers directly in a study of her craft. Accompanied by some of the finest examples of her photojournalism, it also doubles as historical documentation of a career that would be near-unbelievable were it not right there before you, in pictures that reveal more each time you look at them.

Technically a series of travel guides, you’ll be far more inclined to pour over these from the comfort of your armchair than try and stuff them into your back pocket. The reason is that Cereal City Guides are less “a timetable for the Hovedstadens Letbane” and more exquisitely curated dispatches from the world’s leading cities, full of beautiful original photography, thoughtful essays and, yes, some highly discerning recommendations on what to do with your time.

Lurking beneath the surface of this most eye-catching of covers is an absorbing celebration of African surfing culture which travels along the coasts of Morocco, Somalia, Mozambique and beyond. Produced by Cape Town company Mami Wata, Afrosurf captures the joyful intensity of an underreported subculture in profiles, poems, photos, recipes and even a mini comic. Admirably, Mami Wata is also donating 100 per cent of the proceeds to support surf therapy organisations, Waves for Change and Surfers Not Street Children.

It has been an annual tradition since 2000 for industry standard-bearers Pantone to release its “colour of the year”, a tone which supposedly forecasts the mood of the 12 months ahead. Remarkably, 2022’s is a periwinkle blue called “Very Peri” rather than a shade of bleak grey, but we digress. This irresistible coffee-table book showcases all the wonders of the Pantone colour wheel using perfectly rendered, teeny-tiny objects. In other words, pure eye candy.

The portraits of black lesbian, gay, bisexual, trans, queer and intersex lives which brought South African artist Zanele Muholi to prominence in the early 2000s have lost none of their beauty, intimacy or radical power some 20 years later. Which perhaps says as much about the challenges still facing LGBTQIA+ communities around the world as it does the their considerable gift with a camera. Along with the photos themselves, this collection includes unseen and more recent photographs and six newly commissioned essays on Muholi’s work.

The closer technology takes us towards having high-definition cameras planted into our skulls, pumping out perfectly edited photographs for our social media feeds, the more the romance of Polaroid’s humble but iconic creation grows. This coffee-table book charts the history of the camera – which Messrs Andy Warhol, David Hockney and Chuck Close, to name but a few, all loved – as well as, optimistically, its future, which we hope is a long and prosperous one.

Chances are, the thought, “I wish I was living in some mountains somewhere” popped into your head more than once during 2020 and its harrowing sequel 2021. Turning this into a reality may be tricky (planning permission, Ocado delivery limits, etc), but you can indulge the fantasy a little further via this Phaidon collection of architecture porn showing real-life homes set in the natural splendour of the US, Japan, Mexico, New Zealand and more.

Even as far back as 1996, when this classic coffee-table book was first released, vinyl had become the go-to object for anyone pining after the analogue age. Since then, the digital revolution has worked out pretty well for music (if not, you know, society), which has done nothing to diminish the charm of this Taschen’s collection of iconic sleeve art covering the cumbersome, crackly plastic that we all still adore.

Mr Axel Vervoordt is an interior designs visionary whose quest to create the perfect living space now spans half a century. Here, we’re guided through 18 of his masterpieces, from a New York penthouse to a Bordeaux wine château, each guaranteed to make you sigh wistfully and forget you’re just sat at home in your underpants. Which, after all, is what a good coffee table book is all about.