Unlike all the fibbers I have read War And Peace (twice). But Fifty Shades? I’ve never even taken a peek at it . . . honest!

YOU’LL just have to have to take my word for this but, yes, I have read War And Peace. And now I’m going to strain your credulity even further by saying I’ve read it not once, but twice — the first time when I was 20, the second a couple of years ago when I turned 60.

Mind you, I’m not claiming this is a great achievement. Still less is it a credit to my mental powers. For the fact is — and I realise I’m not the first to make this observation — Tolstoy’s great work is a rattling good yarn and not at all a difficult read.

True, the sheer thickness of it is a little daunting at first (it runs to more than 1,000 pages in some editions). And the opening few pages, which throw us into the deep end of Russian high society in 1805, may be slightly heavy going, since they introduce us to so many characters that it’s not always easy to follow who’s who.

There’s also a seriously stodgy bit near the middle, going on for page after mindnumbing page, in which our hero discusses the meaning of life with a freemason he meets at a post station, where he’s waiting to change horses.

Tolstoy experts may tell you this foray into philosophy is the whole point of the book, but speaking for myself I couldn’t wait to get back to the story.

Gripping

And what a gripping story it is, with something for everyone: lashings of love i nterest, Napoleonic battle - scenes brilliantly described and profound insights into human nature thrown in so digestibly that readers can only gulp at the author’s genius.

Those who suggest that reading this masterpiece is a feat of endurance — akin to wading through Joyce’s Finnegans Wake, rowing the Atlantic or getting through to the hotline at Her Majesty’s Revenue & Customs — are doing a grave disservice to people who haven’t tried it.

I’d go further and say that if the knockers tell you they’ve read it themselves, they are almost certainly lying. And they wouldn’t be the only ones.

As evidence of this, I cite this week’s survey by BBC Worldwide, which puts War And Peace high on the list of books people pretend to have read.

To be precise, it comes in fourth place, behind Alice’s Adventures In Wonderland, Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty- Four and Tolkien’s Lord Of The Rings trilogy.

Meanwhile, Charles Dickens claims the distinction of being the most lied about author, with David Copperfield, Bleak House, Great Expectations and Oliver Twist all in the top 20. There, too, are the Harry Potter series and, intriguingly, E. L. James’s Fifty Shades trilogy.

I say intriguingly because, yes, it’s easy to understand why people may claim falsely to have read the works of Tolstoy or Dickens f or f ear of being thought uneducated if they tell the truth. But Fifty Shades Of Grey? Isn’t that all about bondage, sado-masochism and other disreputable practices more to the taste of the likes of Max Mosley than upright citizens like you and me?

If I’d read it (and believe me or not, I hasten to say I haven’t), I reckon I’d keep mighty quiet about it.

If anyone compiled a list of books people claim not to have read when they have, I’d expect to find it right up at the top, alongside drivel such as Dan Brown’s The Da Vinci Code or Jeffrey Archer’s novels (of which, I blush to say, I’ve devoured every clunking cliche).

But then it’s not only to show off that so many pretend to have absorbed every word of books they’ve never opened.

Touchingly, the most common excuse — given by 40 per cent of self- confessed fibbers in the BBC survey — is that they lie to prevent themselves from being left out of conversations.

Which makes me wonder. By the law of averages, there must have been many a dinner party at which all the guests have sat round the table, bluffing their way through a discussion of a book that no one present has read.

False

Here, I ought to point out that only a quarter of the survey’s 2,000 interviewees admitted to telling outright lies, though a third confessed that when someone wrongly assumed they’d read a famous classic, they often failed to correct the false impression.

To these, I reckon we should add a third category, in which I include myself. I mean those who, when asked if they’ve read a particular novel, are not quite sure.

Take David Copperfield, which appears in the BBC top 20 most lied-about books. Have I read it? I’d be surprised if not, since I went through a phase of Dickens mania many years ago. I also have a pretty clear memory of the story.

But is that because I’ve actually read it or merely because I’ve seen the film versions and the TV mini-series? Search me. My memory has been so corroded by half a century of boozing that I haven’t the faintest idea. All I can say is that it’s no surprise 17 per cent in the survey said they were more likely to lie about having read a book if they’d seen an adaptation.

But as I may have mentioned before (I forget what I’ve written as quickly as what I’ve read), there is one huge consolation of having a failing memory. This is that I can re-read a book after only a couple of years and find it completely new to me.

Every character, every twist of the plot is as fresh and surprising as the first time round. The only downside i s that I sometimes find myself three-quarters of the way through a whodunnit when it suddenly dawns on me that I’ve read it before and the ending floods back to me.

I don’t know if others have had the same experience, but I can assure you it’s hugely annoying when it happens.

But how harshly should we judge the outright liars? For myself, I’m inclined to be lenient with them — and particularly with those who fib only because they don’t like to be left out of a conversation.

Disdain

But some are surely beyond the pale. Among them I count a former colleague to whom I confided a couple of years ago that, late in life, I’d discovered Anthony Trollope and loved every word of him.

Indeed, I’d read about a dozen of his novels on the trot before I so much as began to feel it was possible to have too much of a good thing.

Looking at me with withering disdain, my colleague told me that he’d read all Trollope’s books, but only three of them were better than mediocre.

Now that must have been a lie. After all, Trollope wrote something like 80 books in all — most of them mighty thick. Erudite bookworm though my colleague undoubtedly was, why on earth would he slog through the whole lot of them — particularly if he found them so disappointing?

Ah, but I have to concede that War And Peace puts even Trollope’s The Warden, The Way We Live Now and Doctor Thorne (coming to your TV soon) in the shade. So good is it that I almost believe Simon Schama, the wobbly-headed historian, when he tells us he’s read it eight times and is looking forward to the ninth.

As for the Andrew Davies adaptation, now showing on BBC1, I’m enjoying it hugely (though I know some Tolstoy purists are sniffy about it). But condensed into five 60-minute episodes plus an 82minute finale, it’s inevitably racing through the book at such a cracking pace that an awful lot of brilliant stuff is left out (and no, I’m not thinking of the boreathon with the freemason, which Davies wisely slashed to the bone).

All I can say is that if the adaptation tempts viewers to read the book, the BBC will have performed a magnificent public service. Far from being hard going, it’s a cakewalk and a joy, as unputdownable at 60 as at 20.

To those who only pretend they’ve read it, I have this advice: stop lying and start reading. Believe me, you won’t regret it.