29-04-2025
Ian Hislop: I wasted an evening watching With Love, Meghan
The instrument I play
I don't play any instruments. I am very jealous of anyone who can play anything. I went to a baroque concert recently where a man was playing an enormous sort of lute and thought I would like to be able to say: 'Oh yes I play the theorbo.' Or the sackbut or crumhorn.
The music that cheers me up
Dolly Parton or Palestrina. Depending on how much I need cheering. There was a great BBC TV series called Sacred Music in which the choir the Sixteen were singing Palestrina. The presenter, Simon Russell Beale, just walked up and joined in. Now that was impressive.
ALAMY
If I could own one painting it would be
Hogarth's Election Series. I have some large copies in my office, but quite fancy having the real thing on the wall. This satirical masterpiece is currently in the Soane Museum, but if they won't sell it then anything by Hogarth would do. A Rake's Progress or Marriage a la Mode would be fine or the portrait of his servants or the self portrait with the dog. I would be happy with any of those.
My favourite author
Apart from my wife [the author Victoria Hislop], obviously. This changes all the time. Recent favourites include James by Percival Everett, a funny and savage retelling of Huckleberry Finn. I am keen to tell people that I had read his satirical novel about race and the literary world, Erasure, long before it was turned into the popular film American Fiction. Then there is Demon Copperhead by Barbara Kingsolver, which is a retelling of David Copperfield and is an extraordinary tour de force about the American opioid crisis. Amor Towles's A Gentleman in Moscow is an absolute delight that feels like a retelling of a great Russian novel, but is actually original. And for an insight into modern Russia, The Wizard of the Kremlin by Giuliano da Empoli is extraordinary. I also love Cloud Cuckooland by Anthony Doerr, which is an erudite classics based sci-fi thriller and is a hopeful tribute to the power of the written word. At least I think that is what it was.
• The best paperback books of 2025 — April's picks
The book I'm reading
I am re-reading the medieval Mystery Plays as research for my Radio 4 series Ian Hislop's Oldest Jokes. These short plays performed in the street are vernacular versions of the Bible stories and were produced by the craft guilds. The combination of the sacred and the profane, of comedy and tragedy, of the sublime and the ridiculous is extraordinary. No wonder they were banned.
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The book I wish I had written
The Complete Beyond the Fringe, the collected sketches from the 1960s revue by Peter Cook, Alan Bennett, Jonathan Miller and Dudley Moore. I was lucky enough to work with Cook at Private Eye when he was the most hands-off proprietor in publishing history. It is not always true that you shouldn't meet your heroes. I have this slim volume on my shelf next to AG Macdonell's England, Their England, the collected plays of Oscar Wilde and quite a large number of other works of comic genius.
My favourite film
Toy Story, with Toy Story 2, 3 and 4 as very close runners-up. Wise, witty and wonderful. They really do make one think about infinity and beyond. Or on second thoughts it should probably be The Court Jester with Danny Kaye, which is the film I have seen more often than any other and enjoyed the most.
My favourite play
I recently went to see Tom Stoppard's Invention of Love with Simon Russell Beale as AE Housman. I had seen the original version in 1997 and thought it was brilliant. On seeing it again 28 years later I thought it was even better. The other play I saw when it first appeared and twice again since — once as a student production — is Jez Butterworth's Jerusalem. It is magic every time and Mark Rylance's performance is simply the best thing I have ever seen on stage.
The box set I'm hooked on
Bad Sisters by Sharon Horgan. Beautifully written, compelling and really funny.
ALAMY
My favourite TV series
I enjoyed the recent Wolf Hall series with Mark Rylance hugely. I read the Hilary Mantel novels over lockdown, which was a good time to read very long novels and also to be reminded that things have been quite frightening in our history before. Detectorists is also terrific. Funny and melancholy and reassuring about unfashionable England. I found a 9th-century Anglo-Saxon coin in a field when making a documentary for Radio 4 and was so excited I could hear the Detectorist theme tune in my head.
My favourite piece of music
Handel's Messiah. I first came across it at school and thought I knew it backwards, but then I heard it again in Hampstead Church a few months ago with a cut-down choir and an orchestra with period instruments directed by Geoffrey Webber and was overwhelmed.
The play I walked out on
I try not to do this, although someone recently walked out of a play I wrote. The lady in question did have medical assistance and they did have to stop the performance. It was The Autobiography of a Cad at the Watermill in Newbury and I am pretty sure that the paramedics said the problem was that the play was just too funny. The poor theatregoer was overcome with mirth and her sides threatened to split. Fortunately she recovered and was fine and the play restarted allowing a triumphant, hilarious performance by James Mack as the Cad, the ultimate Tory politician, to the delight of the audience.
