MY SIX BEST BOOKS JONATHAN HYDE
JONATHAN HYDE, 69, had key roles in The Mummy and Titanic and guest-starred in TV series including Spooks and Foyle’s War. He is playing Richard Nixon in Frost/Nixon at the Crucible, Sheffield until March 17: sheffieldtheatres.co.uk
RICHARD NIXON: The Life by John A Farrell Scribe, £30
For the Frost/Nixon play I’m doing I wanted a comprehensive biography that was fairly dispassionate and impartial and this one is pretty sound. Nixon was a mix of the deplorable and admirable. He loathed the elite and wanted to open the door to China but he carpet-bombed a sovereign country.
LIFE AND FATE by Vasily Grossman
Vintage, £10.99 War And Peace for the 20th century. An amazing story and a real insight into the sheer chill of Stalin. It’s got tremendous romance and pathos as well. I’m fascinated by how the Russian Revolution was perverted and destroyed by Stalinism.
COUSIN BETTE by Honoré De Balzac
Penguin, £10.99 I love Balzac because he’s such
an antidote to Dickens. Dickens always looked for the wonderful resolution to a heavy tale but Balzac destroyed everybody utterly. This is one of his most savage stories, about a held-in, vicious woman and the damage she does. I find it very exciting.
THE TRANSYLVANIAN TRILOGY by Miklós Bánffy Everyman, £20 each
A huge romance that deals with an extraordinary phase in central European history. There are wonderful characters who fight against the dissolution of the Austro-Hungarian empire. A great read for an old actor.
CROSSING TO SAFETY by Wallace Stegner Penguin, £8.99
I found this jotted down in my Filofax last year so got a copy. It’s the story of two academic couples, one couple privileged and the other struggling. They all have crosses to bear at some point and I found their stoicism remarkable. It made me weep.
THE SINGAPORE GRIP by JG Farrell W&N, £10.99
There are many brilliant Irish writers and I love Farrell because he’s so witty.
This is set in Singapore at the time of the Japanese invasion and the characters are almost cartoonish. He lays out scenarios that are hysterically funny and he manages to insert farce into the heart of tragedy, which is such a skill.