This week’s Bookbencher is Harriett Baldwin, MP for West Worcester.
What book’s on your bedside table at the moment?
The Hare with the Amber Eyes by Edmund de Waal.
What book would you read to your children?
All the Narnia books
What literary character would you most like to be?
Does Superwoman count as a literary character? Flying emission free to the constituency would be really useful.
What book do you think best sums up ‘now’?
Taleb’s Black Swan on the impact of the
highly improbable.
What was the last novel you read?
I read French and Russian literature for my degree, so now I try to resist novels and am catching up on biographies, diaries, histories and policy. I allowed myself Wolf Hall.
What book would you most recommend?
Given enough time, which book would you like to study deeply?
Gibbon’s Decline and Fall.
Which books do you plan to read next?
Alastair Darling’s Back from the Brink and
The Pinch by David Willetts.
If the British Library was on fire and you could only save three books, which ones would you take?
Magna Carta
Gutenberg Bible
Shakespeare’s Folio
Fleur Macdonald is editor of The Omnivore.
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