Which book makes Quentin Letts cry every time?
...are you reading now?
Having just chewed through Samantha Harvey 's Booker prize-winner, Orbital, I fancied another voyage story, this time more dangerous. Joseph Conrad's 1897 novella about the merchant ship Narcissus, sometimes titled The Children Of The Sea, is certainly that: surging, salt pages of muscular peril.
My criticism of Orbital, though I admired its idea, its dreamy prose and brevity, is that little happens in space. Astronauts are quite boring.
Conrad's 'immortal sea' is a constant threat, as are his gnarled, desperate characters – though he was terrible at dialogue. Halfway through the excellent Penguin Classics edition, I have a suspicion Narcissus and her crew may meet a pitchy end.
...would you take to a desert island?
Anthony Trollope's The Way We Live Now. It describes, with dry humour, an opulent conman who fools 19th century London. The Victorian House of Commons leaps to life. David Suchet was perfect in the BBC 's 2001 adaptation. Trollope is good at depicting women, and in my 20s I fell in love with Madame Max Goesler, a 30-something Viennese widow in several of his novels.
...first gave you the reading bug?
My father was a schoolmaster. Books were everywhere: GA Henty's imperial adventure yarns, PG Wodehouse's surreal souffles,
RJ Unstead's history stories and H Rider Haggard's sultry King Solomon's Mines.
Quite sexy, though as a ten-year-old I didn't realise that. I was gripped, too, by Rosemary Sutcliff's more prim The Eagle Of The Ninth and I gurgled at Gerald Durrell's animal-packed comic memoirs.
We had a children's edition of The Odyssey. Disguised Odysseus returns home to Ithaca after 20 years. The only being to recognise him is his dog, Argos, who has waited for his master's return. Faithful Argos is in a bad state. He wags his tail, sighs, dies. Made me cry every time.
...left you cold?
St Paul's letters in the New Testament. Too intellectual for me. I can never work out what he is saying. And I have tried, four times, Anthony Powell's A Dance To The Music Of Time.
One day I'll crack it.
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