My earliest reading\u00a0memory
I have the fuzziest memory of an illustrated Grimms\u2019 fairy tale called Jorinde and Joringel from the time before I could read. I made my mum take it out of the library over and over again. It was about a quest for a flower with some special powers. I wish I could remember why it had such a hold over me.<\/p>\n
My favourite book growing up
I think a sense of humour is forged in childhood and I remember crying with laughter as my older sister read me the Jennings books by Anthony Buckeridge. It didn\u2019t bother me that they were all about prep\u00a0school boys \u2013 it was\u00a0the comedy of embarrassment that really spoke to me.<\/p>\n
The book that changed me as a teenager
I grew up during the Thatcher years. The brutal hardship of the life of 19th-century coal miners in \u00c9mile Zola\u2019s Germinal, which I read when I\u2019d just left school, rattled me out of my comfortable middle-class certainties in a way that the social injustices happening under my nose had failed to do. That\u2019s the power of fiction.<\/p>\n
The book that made me want to be a writer
I think I always wanted to be a writer, but The Bell by Iris Murdoch, about a lay religious community whose peaceful, unworldly exterior hides turbulent and destructive forces, was a landmark in my reading. I read it at 16 and it was perhaps the first time I realised that a novel, if perfectly executed, could be about absolutely anything.<\/p>\n
The book I came back to
I first read Virginia Woolf\u2019s Mrs Dalloway at university and found the constant shifting from one consciousness to another infuriating and tedious. I tried it again in my 50s, closer to the age of Clarissa Dalloway herself, and this time the ripples of thoughts and impressions and the intrusion of the past into the present made much more sense. Maybe in another 40 years I will find something to admire in The Waves.<\/p>\n
The book I reread
When I was young, Persuasion was my least favourite Austen novel. It was too slow, too melancholy, its hero and heroine too lacking in charisma. Each time I\u2019ve reread it since it moves up the rankings. It doesn\u2019t have the dazzle of Pride and Prejudice, but I have grown into its autumnal tone of regret for lost time.<\/p>\n
The book I could never\u00a0read again
I read Le Grand Meaulnes at 17 and thought it must have\u00a0been written especially\u00a0for me. Alain-Fournier\u2019s early death on the Somme only added to its tragic allure. It\u2019s a young person\u2019s book, full of romance and yearning, and should not be revisited in cynical middle age. I tried and soon regretted it \u2013 \u201cthe lost domain\u201d was well and truly lost.<\/p>\n
The book I discovered later in life
I was in my 50s when I first read Anthony Trollope. I don\u2019t know\u00a0what took me so\u00a0long as\u00a0his novels have all the\u00a0elements I enjoy \u2013 psychological acuity, plot, moral dilemmas, wit, social commentary. My favourite is The Small House at Allington. Lily Dale is a delightful heroine in the Lizzie Bennet mould, but Trollope sets up the traditional good suitor\/bad suitor predicament and then drives an elegant carriage and horses through our assumptions. I should add that Timothy West\u2019s masterful performances of the unabridged audiobooks take the reading experience to an even higher level.<\/p>\n
The book I am currently reading skip past newsletter promotion<\/a><\/p>\n Discover new books and learn more about your favourite authors with our expert reviews, interviews and news stories. Literary delights delivered direct to you<\/p>\n Privacy Notice: Newsletters may contain info about charities, online ads, and content funded by outside parties. For more information see our Privacy Policy<\/a>. We use Google reCaptcha to protect our website and the Google Privacy Policy<\/a> and Terms of Service<\/a> apply.<\/p>\n after newsletter promotion<\/p>\n My comfort read
Now We Shall Be Entirely Free<\/a> by Andrew\u00a0Miller. I\u2019m ashamed to say I had not read any of his books until The Land in Winter, which made me urgently seek out his earlier work. It\u2019s that\u00a0 rarest of treats \u2013 propulsive storytelling in sensuous prose.<\/p>\n
I find comfort in even the\u00a0darkest book if the writing is brilliant, but\u00a0for\u00a0the quiet dignity\u00a0of ordinary lives\u00a0I turn to The Fortnight in September by RC Sherriff.<\/p>\n