Our best-read books

Lion, Witch and Wardrobe is the UK favourite... and Harry Potter has six of top 10 places

four children, a magical world frozen in perpetual winter, an evil sorceress... it’s a tale that has filled us with (Turkish) delight for decades.

And it seems we still love getting lost in the icy wastes of Narnia.

for children’s fantasy novel The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe is Britain’s most popular book, a poll reveals. CS Lewis’s classic story of siblings who accidentally discover a land in the grip of the evil White Witch tops a list of 50 most-read books, with 33 per cent of adults enjoying the tale.

The novel, first published in 1950, is closely followed by Dan Brown’s mystery thriller The Da Vinci Code on 30 per cent. Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone came in third on 29 per cent – and was one of six books about the boy wizard in the top ten.

Author of the series – JK rowling – was our top writer, on 26 per cent.

Master of horror fiction Stephen King was picked by 24 per cent of those questioned, while Charles Dickens was chosen by 18 per cent.

The results emerged in a survey of 2,000 adults by onePoll for eBay uK, which also found that British bookworms will immerse themselves in 696 books over a lifetime. The poll suggests there is a clear divide between the sexes. Women’s favourites are generally more ‘modern’ classics, including Girl on the Train (34 per cent), Bridget Jones’s Diary (30 per cent), fifty Shades of Grey (28 per cent) and Gone Girl (26 per cent).

But men’s top reads were older titles such as Nineteen Eighty-four (28 per cent), Treasure Island (28 per cent) and Lord of the flies (23 per cent).

The average adult will get through 11 books a year. Crime is the most popular genre (42 per cent) along with thrillers (38 per cent) and drama (35 per cent). But the poll found 42 per cent of Britons are ‘too busy’ to read as much as they would like – and the average adult owns at least ten books they haven’t yet finished.

unsurprisingly, the holiday season gives us the best chance to get lost in a gripping tale – when we get through at least two novels in a week. rob Johnson of Wordery, eBay uK’s online bookstore, said: ‘It is really heartwarming to see that reading books is still a hobby Brits love to take part in, especially in the days of box sets and instant viewing.’