Best books… Chris Bryant
Chris Bryant, Labour MP for Rhondda and former Minister for Europe, picks his six favourite books. His latest book, Entitled: A Critical History of the British Aristocracy, is published by Doubleday at £25
Audacity to Believe by Sheila Cassidy, 1977 (Darton, Longman & Todd £25). This simple autobiography by a British doctor caught up in the horrors of Pinochet’s Chile inspired me, as a trainee priest, to fight for human rights and join Labour. In 1986, I was thrown out of Chile after attending the funeral of a young lad who’d had petrol poured over him and been set alight by Pinochet’s police.
Things Can Only Get Better
by John O’farrell, 1998 (Transworld £9.99). The only book that could make all the agonies of being a Labour activist during the 18 years of Tory rule from 1979 to 1997 seem ecstatically funny. Somehow it still makes all of the interminably dull party meetings and rain-drenched canvassing worthwhile.
The Red and the Black by
Stendhal, 1830 (Penguin £9.99). The mix of religion, politics, ambition and passion in the morally ambivalent character of Julien Sorel makes for a scintillating psychological drama. I seemed to act out this battle when I was coming to terms with being gay at theological college and as a curate in High Wycombe.
A Place Called Winter by Patrick Gale, 2015 (Tinder Press £8.99). A poignant tale of love between two men on the settler frontiers of Canada. I cried. A lot. That it is based on Gale’s great-grandfather adds piquancy.
The Warden and The Eustace Diamonds by Anthony Trollope, 1855 and 1872 (Penguin £5.99 & £9.99). There is nothing so delicious as Trollope slicing through the avarice and entitlement of the Victorian upper class in these novels from his two most celebrated series. It’s so subtle you feel his characters would barely notice they’d been savaged and would take it all as a compliment. I love the fact that even that great patrician Harold Macmillan loved Trollope, despite the author’s assault on the pretensions of the landed gentry.