WHATBOOK..?

MICHAEL PARKINSON Broadcaster and journalist

. ..are you reading now?

SWEET Caress by William Boyd. He is just about my favourite novelist of the moderns. He has the imagination to make every book he has so far written both different and so fascinating, and is a marvellous storyteller with a compelling style.

...would you take to a desert island?

THE Faber Book Of War Poetry, edited by Kenneth Baker. Since it was published in 1996 it has been my go-to compilation. It has everything from Shakespeare to Rupert Brooke to Auden to the work of anonymous authors describing all the tempers of war.

. ..gave you the reading bug?

THE first book I read with an adult theme was The Grapes Of Wrath by John Steinbeck and from that moment on I was a devotee of American fiction. Then I graduated to Evelyn Waugh and Graham Greene, who set the standard for the rest to follow.

. ..left you cold?

ANYTHING by Sir Walter Scott. I had to read The Antiquary for my O-levels. I thought it was the most boring book I had ever come across.

Sir Michael Parkinson will be interviewing former newspaper editor robin Esser at the Henley Literary Festival this Sunday, October 4, at 11 am, about his Fleet Street memoir Crusader in Chains. For more information, visit henleyliteraryfestival.co.uk