VIVIENNE WESTWOOD,

FASHION DESIGNER AND ENVIRONMENTALIST

75, SHARES THE BOOKS THAT HAVE SHAPED HER LIFE This book is about love and helping each other. It’s beautiful and monumental, and it follows the people who were ruined by the Dust Bowl – a period of severe drought and dust storms in the US during the Thirties. Steinbeck travelled and lived with the migrants and wrote their stories down within six months. It tells you so much about the US at that time, the suffering of the people and how they were exploited.

I love the characters in this book. The protagonist Tom Joad is a real hero for me: he’s willing to sacrifice everything for the people because he sees how they’re being treated and he believes in democracy. The lesson I take from it is the potential to grow with your experience, to be open to it and up for it, and to stick your neck out. by Mikhail Bulgakov

This is the last full book I read. It has a Faustian theme to it, which I enjoyed because I want to rework Faust to explain climate change – how Mephistopheles, the fabled Faustian demon, would be in the media – so at the moment my reading is focused on that.

It’s about a time in Russia when people disappeared without a reason and nobody asked where they went. It’s also about magic and the devil; it’s stunning but hilarious as well. As Features Editor at debut novelist Jessica Winter is no stranger to glorious observational writing. Her first book (out now) is one of the smartest stories about friendship you’re likely to read this year. Jen, the protagonist, is on the brink of an early mid-life crisis and abandons a painting career to take a job at a feminist non-profit where she’s surrounded by passive-aggressive colleagues and an egomaniac boss. Winter takes in feminism and fertility issues while skewering celebrity philanthropy and celebrating friendship; it’s brilliantly funny and hugely moving.