MY SIX BEST BOOKS
JACK SHEPHERD, 72, is best known for title roles in TV series Bill Brand and Wycliffe but has also written for the theatre. He is starring in Home at the Arcola Theatre, Dalston, London. arcolatheatre. com/ 020 7503 1646
GERMINAL
by Émile Zola
Penguin, £ 8.99 ( RRP £ 9.99)
A teacher forced us to read classic novels and this knocked me sideways.
It’s about a mining family in France and the terrible things that happen to them. It gave me a social conscience and a wish to improve things.
BRAVE NEW WORLD
by Aldous Huxley
Vintage, £ 8.49 ( RRP £ 8.99)
Another recommended by the teacher. It’s quite prophetic and, as a crushed sixth- former, it opened up my imagination as to what the future might be like.
Having had an intense Baptist upbringing it was also refreshing to read a book where sexuality was in the open.
THE PURSUIT OF THE MILLENNIUM
by Norman Cohn
Out of print
A history of messianic revolution in Europe. It starts with some religious maniacs in the ninth century and ends up with Stalin and Hitler, showing they all follow the same delusive pattern. It is fantastic and has set in motion various things I’ve produced in the theatre since.
CATCH- 22
by Joseph Heller
Vintage, £ 8.49 ( RRP £ 8.99)
I vaguely remember the Second World War and this is an example of somebody taking apart what actually happened, having experienced it himself, and reassembling it to create a new viewpoint, where everything turns to bitter
laughter. I really got it.
THE BOOK OF THE NEW SUN
by Gene Wolfe
Gollancz, £ 8.49 ( RRP £ 8.99)
A quartet of books, where Wolfe, drawing inspiration from Europe in the Dark Ages, imagines the world in the future when the sun is dying and energy has run out. It’s an astounding work, taking you to places you never expected to go.
DAVID COPPERFIELD
by Charles Dickens
Penguin, £ 7.49 ( RRP £ 7.99)
I wrote a play about six years ago about the Chartists and felt I was treading in Dickens’ footsteps and the book I drew on was this.
He was able to articulate the feelings and lives of the people at the bottom of industrial society. When you’re trying to get characters to live on a page Dickens is the benchmark.