MY SIX BEST BOOKS

STANLEY JOHNSON

STANLEY JOHNSON, 77, is a former Conservative MEP and father of Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson. His latest novel Kompromat (Point Blank, £8.99) is out now. Last year, he took part in I’m A Celebrity… Get Me Out Of Here! and he appears in the new series of The Real Marigold Hotel which will air later this year on BBC One.

KENNEDY’S REVISED LATIN PRIMER

by Benjamin Hall Kennedy

Wallenburg, £12.95

My introduction to the classics. I started Latin at prep school. It teaches you how language is constructed and how to speak and it’s a wonderful basis for understanding how to write.

I’d argue it teaches you how to think as well.

SOUTHERN CROSS TO POLE STAR

by Aimé Tschiffely

Head Of Zeus, £25

I read this when I was fairly young. It’s about somebody who rides two horses 10,000 miles from Argentina to New York in 1925.

It was my first exposure to South America and may have been what made me spend time there in my gap year. Brilliant.

THE GATHERING STORM

by Winston Churchill

Penguin, £16.99

When Churchill was elected Prime

Minister in 1951, I was old enough to realise what an impact he’d had on Britain’s ability to fight the Second World War. There’s an extraordinary line in this where he writes that all his life had been but

a preparation for this power.

OUP, £34

POPULATION, RESOURCES, ENVIRONMENT

Norton, £9.99

by Paul R Ehrlich and Anne H Ehrlich

Out of print

I read this in 1970 when I was getting involved in environmental issues. It showed that the continued explosive growth of the human population, combined with our consumption patterns, had set the world on a course for disaster.

THE NEW OXFORD BOOK OF ENGLISH VERSE

by Helen Gardner (ed)

I love poetry and won the Newdigate Prize for poetry at Oxford. What I like is how poets manage to encapsulate feelings so well. It’s a great relief to encounter poetry.

THE BOOK OF JOB

At school, I took A-level divinity and my set book was this. It was so readable and the language was brilliant. You have to hand it to him because, whatever they threw at him, he rode out the storm.