Fresh from sixty radio and TV appearances in 2011 alone, the popular historian and constitutional expert, Kate Williams, is on Shelf Life this week. She tells us about her religious fervours under the covers and what’s worse than finding Mein Kampf on someone’s bookshelf. Her first novel, The Pleasures of Men, is out tomorrow.
1) What are you reading at the moment?
Marina Warner’s Stranger Magic, Vassily Grossman’s Life and Fate, and H.B. Morse’s 1920s work The Chronicles of the East India Company Trading to China — my next novel is about China in the nineteenth century.
2) As a child, what did you read under the covers?
The Bible. I experienced an intensely religious phase when I was younger.
3) Has a book ever made you cry and if so which one?
Anna Karenina. I find the pain of Anna and Vronsky almost unbearable.
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