Best books… Hannah Rothschild
The author, filmmaker and philanthropist chooses her favourite novels. Her new novel, House of Trelawney (Bloomsbury £16.99), a love story and satire about the 2008 financial crash, is out now
The Way We Live Now by Anthony Trollope, 1875 (Wordsworth Classics £2.50). Surely the biggest, baddest baddie in literature, Augustus Melmotte, a foreigner intent on swindling dumb British toffs, arrives with a load of fake shares and a beautiful daughter. He nearly succeeds but his comeuppance, when it comes, is bleak, pathetic and thoroughly enjoyable.
The Pursuit of Love by Nancy Mitford, 1945 (Penguin £8.99). A present from my grandmother to mark my 15th birthday and treasured ever since. Mitford’s satire tells the loosely autobiographical tale of a charming and bonkers aristocratic family.
Scoop by Evelyn Waugh, 1938 (Penguin £9.99). An utterly absurd but brilliant case of mistaken identity: a newspaper sends its nature correspondent to cover an African civil war. This fast, light and lethal novel skewers journalists and the privileged.
The Neapolitan Novels by Elena Ferrante, 2012-2015 (Europa Editions £12.99 each). I read these four books about two friends from childhood to middle age back to back, only pausing/sleeping from absolute necessity. Husbands, lovers, family and children are bit-part players on a stage dominated by one central extraordinary and destructive female friendship.
Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoy, 1878 (Penguin £8.99). One-line synopsis: an entrancing, beautiful woman lives and then dies for passion. It should be required reading for anyone wanting to learn about themselves or others: on every page, Tolstoy lays bare the frailties and peccadillos of human behaviour.
The Overstory by Richard Powers, 2018 (Vintage £9.99). Nine Americans from disparate backgrounds come together to save a forest. This extraordinary novel transformed my view of nature. Never again will I pass a great tree without offering a quiet but heartfelt incantation of thanks, gratitude and wonder.