This week, Paul Torday tells us about his fear of appearing on the stage, and reveals what he’d put on the GCSE English Literature syllabus. His new novel, The Legacy of Hartlepool Hall, is published today.
1) As a child what did you read under the covers?
I used to read the Narnia books by C.S. Lewis, with the wonderful Pauline Baynes illustrations. My two favourites were The Horse and his Boy, and The Silver Chair.
2) Has a book ever made you cry, and if so which one?
I can’t think of any book that has made me cry. I cry every Christmas when they screen The Railway Children (the original version with Jenny Agutter and Lionel Blair). The ending always takes me by surprise.
3) You are about to be put into solitary confinement for a year and allowed to take three books. What would you choose?
I think it would have to be The Last Chronicles of Barsetshire by Anthony Trollope; Sword of Honour by Evelyn Waugh and The Alanbrooke Diaries by Field Marshal Alanbrooke — gripping insider’s account of Britain’s role in the Second World War.
4) Which literary character would you like to sleep with?
Winnie-the-Pooh.
5) If you could write a self-help book, what would you call it?
How to change a light bulb. It would be a guide for incredibly impractical men, with chapters such as ‘How to break dishes and never be asked to wash up again.’
6) Michael Gove has asked you to rewrite the GCSE English literature syllabus. Which book, which play and which poem would you make compulsory reading?
The book would have to be Sellar & Yeatman’s 1066 and All That to ensure that this generation of children get a balanced view of our island history. The play would be William Nicholson’s Shadowlands, the story of C.S Lewis and his relationship with the American Joy Gresham. It is heart-rending, gripping stuff and has so many ideas about love and faith that it would, I think, soften the heart of the most hardened teenager. The poem I would choose would be ‘Noli me tangere, for Caesar’s I am’, the sonnet describing Thomas Wyatt’s illicit (and nearly fatal) love affair with Anne Boleyn. It brings a remote period of history vividly to life, and is also intensely romantic.
7) Which party from literature would you most like to have attended?
Any party given by the Duke and Duchess of Guermantes, from Proust’s In Search of Lost Time. I would like to have met Swann.
8) What would you title your memoirs?
Have I already told you about this?
9) Which literary character do you dream of playing?
I would hate to play any literary character and loathe the idea of being on stage.
10) Which book would you give to a lover?
A catalogue from the next Sotheby’s Fine Wine Sale, to test if she really loved me.
11) Spying Mein Kampf or Dan Brown on someone’s bookshelf can spell havoc for a friendship. What’s your literary deal breaker?
The World Encyclopaedia of Stamps and Stamp Collecting on someone’s bookshelf would certainly give me pause for thought. Or anything by Enid Blyton.
Fleur Macdonald is editor of The Omnivore.
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