John Walsh’s Top Five 1980s Novels

after lunchtime on Saturdays, let alone on weekday evenings.’ He wanted to produce a chain that sold only real books—and to fill the shops, floor to ceiling, with titles that people longed to buy; he wanted to cram the shelves with vast amounts of stock, and to staff the shops with people who knew their subject and could enthuse with the punters about what was on the shelves. And he wanted to have his shops stay open until 10pm, every day and at weekends.

The first bookshop bearing the chairman’s name and the company’s W logo opened its doors at 9am on 30 September 1982.

The seven staff, including Tim, watched with interest as the first customer walked in, headed for the Reference section, bought a copy of the Koran and took it to the till to pay. Waterstone’s was in business. In the next ten years, it would revolutionise British bookselling.

Restoration by Rose Tremain. Headstrong, ambitious and lustful, medical student Robert Merivel finds himself in Charles II’S court, as Tremain reinvents the historical novel with flamboyant wit and vivid energy.

Midnight’s Children by Salman Rushdie. A head-spinning tale connecting one man’s life to the story of post-independence India. Rushdie’s masterpiece virtually invented a new language for Anglo-indian literature.

Waterland by Graham Swift.

A Norfolk teacher facing the sack regales his class with 300 years of scandalous family history. Swift combines Dickensian storytelling with subtle psychology.

Money by Martin Amis. John Self, media tart and avid consumer of junk culture, visits New York to direct a film with some Hollywood grotesques. Amis’s gleeful chronicling of modern squalor was never funnier.

Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit by Jeanette Winterson. Winterson’s assured debut concerns a young girl, adopted by Pentecostalists, struggling with her beliefs and the onset of lesbian attraction.