From time to time newspapers invite writers to describe the ‘books that changed my life’. The resulting columns too often dazzle the reader with a display of erudition or passion, rather than tell the more mundane truth. The mundane truth is that our dispositions and the courses of our lives tend to be fixed before our ages run to two digits: a time when we were unlikely to be tackling Proust, understanding Nietzsche or appreciating C.P. Cavafy. The child being father to the man, we should be looking at fairy tales, picture books and First Readers if we seek the truly formative influence of literature. Foreign and war correspondents or derring-do travel writers are less likely to have been set upon their life’s path by Wilfred Thesiger, T.E. Lawrence or Eric Newby than by Enid Blyton’s Five Get into Trouble.
From almost the moment I could I read voraciously: everything, anything I could get my hands on.
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