THE BOOKS OF MY LIFE

I’ve borrowed this idea from the British newspaper The Guardian. I hope that it inspires you to write similar salutations to the books which had a great impact on your life.

MY EARLIST READING MEMORY

My earliest reading memory is of a Rupert Bear annual. They were conceived, written and drawn by Mary and Herbert Toutel in 1920, which makes Rupert six weeks older than my mother. Alfred Bestall took over in 1935 and continued to work on Rupert until he was in his 90s.

My 1958 annual was a Christmas present from my oldest cousin Brian who had just come back from a stint in Aden, part of Yemen. He was one of the last British youngsters called up for National Service. Thank goodness, he came home safe and well. And with a Rupert annual for me.

I loved to read Rupert’s adventures, revelling in the tales of dragons, imps, a frog king and even the prosaic Rupert and the Train Journey. In fact, one of the delights of the books was the juxtaposition of bizarre and astonishing adventures with the more normal. If the life of a young bear in a town resembling the Home Counties can be termed normal.

Looking back, I always liked the fantastic. My favourite books included the Red, Green and Blue Pirates, The Wind in the Willows, The Borrowers, The Domes of Mars and Henry Treece’s Viking Trilogy.

THE BOOK THAT CHANGED ME AS A TEENAGER

The Lord of the Rings was recommended to me by Miss Hobson our redoubtable English teacher and school librarian. She was a no-nonsense woman, sometimes a ferocious one, sporting a severe haircut and thick black glasses resembling those worn by Buddy Holly. She was tough and down to earth in demeanour, but she obviously had a love of the fantastic. She chose as her class readers: King Soloman’s Mines, I am David and A Kid for Two Farthings. The Lord of the Rings fitted into these genres perfectly.

I loved the book because Tolkien created a world that seemed as real as my own yet far more exciting. He filled it with epic landscapes and homely houses, grand moral dilemmas and a fascination with food and drink, with heroes and with horrors. Yet the burning flame of the story derives from the terrified heroism of the smallest people of that world. The best stories, I discovered, were told by ordinary folk.

THE BOOK THAT MADE ME WANT TO BE A WRITER

As a teenager, I read James Joyces’ Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man countless times. It gave such an insight into the creative process and into the mind of a young man in all his gory idiosyncrasy. It was like I was peering into Joyce’s mind while, strangely, he was also peering into mine. Something stirred within me. It was as if he were holding aloft a torch and pointing the way. I too could be a writer, I thought. Not as good as my hero, but I could have a go.

THE AUTHOR THAT I COME BACK TO

The author that I come back to now is George MacDonald Fraser. I remember vividly when I first discovered him. I was in the local library at about 2.30 one Saturday afternoon when I idly started to read his novel Flashman. At 5.00 the librarian tapped me on the shoulder to tell me that they were about to close. I had no idea that so much time had gone by. I had read almost all the book. I took out the next two for the weekend and read them on Sunday.

Flashman is a wonderful invention. A dastardly villain, a vicious coward, a consummate liar, a man who fearfully avoids trouble but always finds himself up to his neck in it. As well as this colossus of mendacity, the books are filled with real historical people. They are a textbook example of using research to inform but never overwhelm your story.

Fraser writes with verve and great gusto, We often read that some novelist or another is a master storyteller but for me Fraser is exactly that. And I’m not the only one who thinks so. P.G Wodehouse, the creator of Jeeves said, "If ever there was a time when I felt that 'watcher-of-the-skies-when-a-new-planet' stuff, it was when I read the first Flashman."

THE BOOK I REREAD

I have read The Lord of the Rings more than twenty times but no longer feel the need to revisit it. I read the Flashman novels repeatedly, as I do Asimov’s The Caves of Steel, The Naked Sun and The Robots of Dawn.

Yet the book I turn to time and again, and incidentally, the first book I bought on my Kindle is Treasure Island. Dad used to read this aloud to us, hamming up the pirate voices something shocking. I still have his copy with the brilliant, fascinating and scary illustrations by Mervyn Peake. But it’s the sheer joy and exuberance that I like most about the book. The characters straddle that fine line between caricature and startingly original. And what I would give to have created that heroic villain Long John Silver.

Robert Louis Stevenson was inspired to create Silver by his friendship with the poet William Ernest Henley who had his leg amputated in his late teens. I live in Menton where Stevenson often stayed, and recently found out that Henley probably visited him here. Just imagine, Long John Silver walking the streets of this Rivera town.

THE BOOK I WOULD NEVER READ AGAIN

I loved On the Road when I was younger and recently settled down to read it. I could not get past the first dozen pages. I must be too old for it, I thought miserably. But I enjoyed the book when I needed to. And I would recommend it to people like my younger self.

WHAT I AM CURRENTLY READING

I’ve just read The Reader on the 6.27 by Jean-Paul Didierlaurent, who sadly died from cancer a few years ago. This is an idiosyncratic book about people mired in gruesome situations who find themselves and love through literature and fellowship. It’s one that will stay with me.

MY COMFORT READ

I don’t have just one comfort read but three, according to how much comfort I am in need of. These are the Jeeves and Wooster stories, The Wind in the Willows or Three Men in a Boat. Just the thing with a nice cup of tea and a biscuit. Or for someone who has just this moment realised that he’d rather like to have lived in Edwardian England.

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