Good rereads when you’re no longer young

The Eagle of the Ninth,

Rosemary Sutcliff

Still exciting and stirring, this tale of a lost Roman legion’s insignia takes you on an adventure into the wilds beyond Hadrian’s Wall and back.

The Annotated Alice,

Edited by Martin Gardner

Lewis Carroll’s “children’s books” are nothing of the kind: they are by a maths don with a killer sense of humour, who probably foresaw the way we would need experts to winkle out the theories and jokes in the text.

Persuasion, Jane Austen

The writer’s last novel, but arguably her most satisfying. Its heroine is a put-upon daughter past marrying age who has let love slip away for her selfish family’s sake. Or has she?

The Little Prince,

Antoine de Saint-Exupéry

A children’s book, but those of any age will be swept up in its wisdom. The prince falls to earth and is taught lessons we still never heed: “One sees clearly only with the heart. What is essential is invisible to the eye.”

To Kill a Mockingbird, Harper Lee

Lee’s only published novel, set in the Deep South during the Depression, is told through the eyes of a six-year-old whose lawyer father is defending a black man. A startling look at racism.

I Capture the Castle, Dodie Smith

Cassandra Mortmain is a 1930s Lizzie Bennet, spirited and independent, but shaken up when rich young men move into the big house near her draughty ruin of a home. Beguiling.