Robert Halfon, the Conservative MP for Harlow, is our bookbencher this week. He tells us what he would read his unborn children, and which books he would save from destruction. 1) Which book is on your bedside table at the moment? Omega, a Journey Through Time. I collect watches and love mechanical and automatic ones. Many
The Guardian currently seems to be embarking on more crusades to save literature than Salman Rushdie’s Twitter account. Last week’s post by blogger Sam Jordison was no exception. He asked whether book reviews are “bland, boring and formulaic”. Fresh from judging Not the Booker (a Guardian online award designed to champion independent publishers and celebrate the vox
Amanda Craig tells us what she would title her memoirs, which book reduces her to tears and the 19th century literary heart throb her husband most looks like. 1) What are you reading at the moment? I always read several books at once, so it’s Richard Bradford’s Martin Amis biography (review), Julia Jones’s A Ravelled Flag
This week’s Bookbencher is David Davis, the MP for Haltemprice and Howden. He tells us which literary character he’d most like to be and what books would double as good doorstoppers. What book’s on your bedside table at the moment? A Kindle, so about 150 of them. Which book would you read to your children? Given their age,
Stephen Vizinczey, whose 1960 classic In Praise of Older Women was re-released last year as a Penguin Classic, is next in the hotseat. 1) What are you reading at the moment? Ian McEwan’s Amsterdam 2) As a child, what did you read under the covers? I was lucky that I never had to read
The English have never been ones for lounging around in black polo necks, chain-smoking and discussing the Marxist implications of a full stop. Intellectualism is a habit we leave to others. Compared to friends across the Atlantic or over the Channel, the rare beast we call the English literary intellectual has been starved. Until recently,
This week’s Bookbencher is Mark Field, MP for Cities of London and Westminster. Which book’s on your bedside table at the moment? Juliet Gardiner’s comprehensive tome, The Thirties: An Intimate History of Britain. I have become an avid reader of authors such as David Kynaston, Dominic Sandbrook and Peter Hennessy who have written some magisterial socio-political
Next off the shelf is actor Tom Hollander. He tells us what children ought to read at school, which party from literature he’d most like to attend, and that his dream is to play Victor Hugo’s most tragic hero. The first episode of the new series of ‘Rev.’, in which he stars, airs tonight at 9pm on
Jane Asher is second in the hot seat. She tells us how to get children reading; who she would have a literary fling with and what exactly would make her end a friendship. 1) What are you reading at the moment? Inspired by seeing her interviewed recently, I’m catching up with Diana Athill’s collected memoirs:
‘I have to apologise to Jane Austen for involving her beloved Elizabeth in a murder investigation but this fusion of my two enthusiasms – for the novels of Jane Austen and for writing detective stories – has given me great pleasure which I hope will be shared by my readers.’ When you’re over 90 and
This week’s Bookbencher is Michael Fallon, MP for Sevenoaks. What book’s on your bedside table at the moment? David Abulafia The Great Sea: A Human History of the Mediterranean (2011) – a magisterial successor to Fernand Braudel’s survey of mare nostrum. What book would you read to your children? Winston Churchill My Early Life (1930)
The charming novelist Michael Arditti kindly offered to answer a few questions for Shelf Life, the new feature where we ask literary people impertinent questions about their reading habits. He also posed for a photo in a rather debonair fashion on his sedan chair with his bookshelf in the background. He mentioned that he does
Alice Hoffman’s The Dovekeepers marked something of a departure for the hugely successful American novelist, better known for magical realist holiday fodder like Practical Magic or The Story Sisters. Her latest novel plunges us into 70AD, into the midst of Jewish resistance to the Roman siege of Masala, and into the lives of four women
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
This week we spoke to Oliver Heald, the MP for North East Hertfordshire. What book’s on your bedside table at the moment? To a Mountain in Tibet by Colin Thubron What book would you read to your children? Corduroy by Don Freeman What literary character would you most like to be? Richard Hannay in The
A certain literary prize announced earlier this week received a lot of flak because the shortlist was deemed too readable. I want to know what books they were reading. The Barnes was as cold as a washed up kipper; the Kelman featured a pigeon as a narrator and most of the praise heaped on deWitt
Here’s the latest in our Bookbenchers series of posts. This week, Sir Menzies Campbell pulled up a pew and told us what he’s reading. What book’s on your bedside table at the moment? The End of the Party by Andrew Rawnsley. What book would you read to your children? Treasure Island by Robert
It’s easy to blame the Americans, but sometimes — as the courts ruled in Perugia last week — they’re innocent. The case brought to mind another instance of injustice meted out to our transatlantic cousins, all in the name of that most exacting of mistresses: grammar. Of the many linguistic crimes we’ve accused them of
This is the second instalment in our Bookbenchers series. What book’s on your bedside table at the moment? There are two books on my bedside table. I’m a Gemini so one is never enough. I am simultaneously reading The Book Thief by Markus Zusak and After Virtue by Alasdair MacIntyre. The Book Thief is the
Inspired by Boris’s recent oration, I was going to compose an epigram in praise of his prose, a dirty limerick in honour of his hobbies and a white paper for the promise of his politics. That was until I came across the unthinkable: Boris Johnson split the infinitive. He’ll probably try and defend himself: the Mayor