2 hours ago
6
My earliest reading memory
Sitting on the sofa with my mum reading Mabel the Whale by Patricia King, with beautiful colour illustrations by Katherine Evans. I think it was pre-school. My mother was not always a patient teacher, and I was often a slow learner, but the scene, the tableaux, in memory, has the serenity of an icon.
My favourite book growing up
Rosemary Sutcliff’s The Eagle of the Ninth. It’s a story set in Roman Britain; the Eagle is the lost standard of the ninth legion. I was a boy already obsessed by all things Ancient Roman (the alternative to the kind of boy obsessed with dinosaurs). One of the places I remember reading it is in bed with my dad. On Sunday mornings my brother and I would climb into the big bed. My parents had long since split up. There was a picture on the wall, a modest reproduction of Velázquez’s Rokeby Venus. To me, this voluptuous woman gazing at herself in a mirror was my mother. It’s interesting to me how the setting in which you read is such an integral part of the reading experience.
The book that changed me as a teenager
I wasn’t quite a teenager (I was 12) and it’s not quite a book, but it definitely changed me. The end of the summer term at school, there was an outdoor production of Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream. I was Cobweb, one of Titania’s fairy servants. The play was performed at dusk. All around us, Wiltshire fields and Wiltshire woodland. The atmosphere poured into me: two worlds touching; the overwhelming richness of the language. No doubt the feeling was partly shaped by anticipation of the long holiday. Also, of course, by being a pubescent boy. Theatre is sexy, always.
The writer who changed my mind
Albert Camus, The Myth of Sisyphus – his inquiry into why, given the absurdity of life, you might not choose suicide. I was 18, not remotely suicidal, but wanting to be cleverer and a bit French. (These are not despicable ambitions.) And Camus is very cool. These days he would be sponsored by a company making raincoats. His “philosophy” is that of Polish cavalry preparing to charge German tanks. One is to be stylish. One does not make a fuss. One notices everything. One does not imagine that anything can be saved. Amor fati.
The book that made me want to be a writer
This is an easy one. The Rainbow by DH Lawrence. We were reading it for A-level. I found the book overwhelming. I felt I was being shown Life. All my own yearning as a 17-year-old (one who was very much in love) was spoken to by this somewhat cantankerous son of a Nottinghamshire miner. The final scenes of the novel forced me on to my feet. I was madly excited. I could think of no better way to spend a life than trying to create something like this myself. It’s worth keeping in mind the shocking fact that in 1915 The Rainbow was censored, and more than 1,000 copies of it were burned. OK to send young men to die like flies in France, but a whisper of sex … No, thank you.
The book or author I came back to
As a DH Lawrence fan, I allowed myself to be influenced by the Cambridge critic FR Leavis who (in my understanding) seemed to suggest that if you were for Lawrence you couldn’t be for Joyce. Lawrence was morally serious; Joyce was not. Out of loyalty to Lawrence it took me years to get to Joyce, and it wasn’t until I read Dubliners, and specifically The Dead, that I saw what should have been obvious – you don’t have to choose. Hugely different personalities, both precious.
The author I reread
Recently I’ve been rereading EM Forster. I’m not sure what sparked that. I reread them all (with the exception of A Passage to India). I was immensely impressed. He communicates a deep sanity in his novels, and an urgent and still very relevant call to emotional maturity and openness. Where Angels Fear to Tread – early and quite slight – is a big favourite. All his themes are there. Also, A Room With a View. He’s an author whose strong, calm voice – never shrill – we need to hear more of.
The book I could never read again
Countless. All those thrillers that hung around the house (and that I thoroughly enjoyed as a young teen): Desmond Bagley, Hammond Innes, Alistair MacLean, Ian Fleming. I admire them, their professionalism, their craftsmanship. But to read them again would be like struggling back into my school uniform.
The author I discovered later in life
Penelope Fitzgerald. I knew nothing about her until my mid-30s. The first book of hers I read was the last she wrote: The Blue Flower. Thrillingly strange, sometimes very funny, it is, I think, an obvious masterpiece – fragments from the life of an 18th-century German poet who died while still very young. She brought to it a whole long life’s worth of understanding and insight. It’s a portrait of various kinds of madness, but a saner book you won’t find.
The book I am currently reading
Dominion by Tom Holland: a history of Christianity and how it has shaped the culture to the extent that it’s almost invisible (we are the goldfish, says Holland, and Christianity is the water we swim in). I’m very grateful to him. I know more, and am rethinking some of my lazy assumptions. Alongside it, I’m rereading Elizabeth Bishop’s collected poems. Nothing flashy about her stuff. Just the calm authority of one who knew, with pen in hand, exactly what she was doing. She used to be somewhat in Robert Lowell’s shadow, but not any more; a poet’s poet (like Marianne Moore, whom she knew well). What seems at first wry and ironic, appears, on rereading, more like heartbreak.
My comfort read
Really, what I’d like are my old Tintin albums. But where are they? Did I give them away? Hergé is a slightly controversial figure. He didn’t cover himself in glory during the war. I think Tintin and Captain Haddock might not approve of him. But as boys, my brother and I couldn’t get enough of it.
