My Life in Literature

I’ve been an avid reader (and hobby writer) for as long as I can remember. Give me a comfortable seat (whether in the lounge at home, on a plane train or bus, or in a pub or coffee bar), a bit of music in the background and a good book and I will be a happy man. Let me share with you a few memories and recommendations from my life in literature:

The first book I read was probably one of those cloth ones with pictures of apples and balls and cars and stuff that a baby can chew on when fed up with trying to figure out what all that printed coloured stuff really is (so after about 5 seconds). The first one that actually meant anything (though I don’t directly remember it) was almost certainly the classic Ladybird “Janet and John” - I got through the whole series I think, as it was pretty much obligatory when I was at infant’s school in the late 1950s.


The first book I remember reading – also at school, but a little later – was again a mandatory children’s classic, and either “The Hundred and One Dalmations” by Dodie Smith or “The Borrowers” by Mary Norton. Both written in the early 1950s, they were enchanting stories that were both subsequently turned into movies with varying success. The first was originally a very twee but classic Disney cartoon, later re-booted as a live action movie with Glenn Close in the key villainness role of Cruella de Ville (both highly successful at the box office), while the movie version of the second starred John Goodman (1997). with a 2011 remake starring Stephen Fry. Neither was particularly successful.


Teenage literature was not really a specific book category in my youth, but there were certain books that most kids read. Girls tended to focus on the Lassie books, or Enid Blyton’s Famous Five series (I read a couple too – they were ok) while boys focused more on comics: more correctly, English war comics, since the Marvel series hadn’t reached us from America yet. No Spiderman, Avengers or Superman for us – we devoured all-round British World War 2 heroes like Captain Hurricane, the huge Marine with his trusty batman Maggot Malone. But top of the list was really Biggles.... Capt. W.E.Johns penned in excess of a hundred books about the intrepid aviator, ranging from the 1st World War, through the interwar years when our hero was an adventurous pilot for hire, saving the world from Russian invaders (amongst other totally implausible plots), through the 2nd World War as Biggles – now an Air Commodore - must have turned 50, and on into a twilight career in the Special Air Police. My dad used to work next door to the printing works that churned them out and at various times must have brought me home the lot. I loved them.


The book I wish I’d written is Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings. For sheer scope and imagination I’ve come across nothing to compare. Inventing an entire imaginative history with its own maps, mythology, societies and languages was a remarkable achievement. I know writers like C.S. Lewis with the Narnia series, Frank Herbert with his Dune series and of course J.K.Rowling with her Potterverse have shown similar creativity but for me Middle Earth remains the best. I first discovered it in 1972 on a trip to Canada after my dad died, when I read the first third of Fellowship... on a weekend trip to Niagara Falls, in the back of a big Ford station wagon. I couldn’t find it back home and bought an Authorised Canadian version in three volumes when I went back to Ottawa two years later, and read that about a dozen times until it literally fell to pieces, forcing me to buy a one-volume edition, which I’ve read another four or five times, though not for a couple of years now. Must dig it out.... That said, it would have been far more beneficial financially to have come up with the Harry Potter stuff – never read a single one, but seen the movies.....and boy, has Joanne Rowling made a few bob on the back of it. And good for her!


The book I wish I’d never bothered with was called The Maker’s Mark, by Labour politician Roy Hattersley. Billed as “The First Volume in a 7 part Family Saga”, I bought it for about three quid in a bookshop in Tintagel. It ran to about 500 pages and was something about a family in Sheffield.... and that’s all I remember. The most turgid pile of poo in history, I’m convinced it would never have seen the light of day if Hattersley hadn’t been a bit famous for his day job. It took me a year to struggle through about 300 pages before I gave it up as a bad job and donated it to the book stall at the local Parish fete. Priced at 50p, then 25p then 10p, it was still on sale the last time I went to the fete about 5 years later. Awful, awful awful.....


The book I’m reading now is Beneath Another Sky by the eminent British historian Norman Davies. The man is one of my favourite writers, and I’ve read several of his works, including his definitive two volume history of Poland, God’s Playground (it proved invaluable in learning about my adopted country when I moved here 20 years ago), huge and detailed histories of both Europe and The (British) Isles, and a fascinating book detailing a number of once mighty kingdoms that ran their course and disappeared, called Vanished Kingdoms. I thoroughly recommend them all – indeed, anything written by the man. Beneath… is part travel book and part history, as he makes a round the world trip from Cornwall to, amongst other destinations, Azerbaijan, India, the UAE, Australia/New Zealand and the USA. Written with his usual eye for both detail and the unusual, and with his trademark dry humour and, sometimes, cynicism, it’s an absolute joy.


My favourite book genre has changed as I’ve aged. In my teens and twenties I devoured science fiction, with shelves full of Asimov and Clark, Heinlein and Farmer (the Riverworld series I loved but when I re-read them last year I spotted innumerable flaws). I still enjoy Iain M. Banks, and Kim Stanley Robinson’s Mars colonization series and Earth trilogy (about global warming, more relevant than ever) are brilliant. In my thirties I discovered Dickens and Paul Theroux’s travel books, and Hobsbawm’s four volume history of Europe from 1789 to 1991 – heavy going, but worthwhile. Nowadays, my main reading remains history books, in particular those by Norman Davies or Andrew Marr, political biographies of Churchill and Mountbatten, Blair and Bush, anything by Bill Bryson, plus re-visiting loads of old favourites. So it’s broadened out a lot.


Newspapers? Nope. I get my news fix online nowadays. I can’t remember the last time I picked up a print version – probably in an airport lounge somewhere though. I favour The Guardian and The Independent, and can’t abide the Mail or the Express, scurrilous rags that they are. Anything else is a comic not worthy of the term “newspaper”.


I do wish there were more periodical news magazines around. Back in the early '80s I used to enjoy one called Now! That was a glossy weekly and very good but it went bust after about a year. The Economist is ok, but can be dull, Time and Newsweek too American focused for my tastes, and both The Spectator and The New Statesman too politically biased. Where is the unbiased news reporting we used to be so good at? Gone, drowned by political spin and Fake News. Shame.


It would be great if magazines took more short stories by unpublished writers – er, like me... - as well. There used to be a good many but I struggle to find one to submit my stuff too. There is Granta, and that seems to be about it, at least in the UK. Given my writing tends to be pretty Anglocentric I’m not sure it would sell in say the US or Australia – that’s if I could find something other than The New Yorker to try. Any ideas? Do let me know!