WHATBOOK..?

…are you reading now?

The Journals of Sir Walter Scott: 1825-32. The collapse of the Ballantyne printing business, in which he had a financial interest, left him heavily in debt. Rather than declare himself bankrupt, he decided to write himself out of trouble.

During these years he wrote six novels and 11 volumes of non-fiction — and these wonderful journals that chart his long years of labour.

his wife Charlotte’s death in 1826 plunged him into profound and enduring grief, but it did not diminish his determination to write himself free of the dishonour that had been brought down on his head through little fault of his own. By the time of his death in 1832 his debts had been fully and honourably discharged. And Scotland still remembers him with pride.

…would you take to a desert island?

SINCe I am only permitted one book, it will have to be one I can return to constantly, so I’ll take ‘The Oxford Book of Twentieth Century english Verse’ edited by Philip Larkin.

It received some puzzled reviews when it was published in 1973 and was considered an eccentric collection, but I think it’s brilliant. It introduced me to a number of so called ‘minor poets’, such as Laurence Binyon of ‘They shall grow not old’ fame, whose ‘Burning of the Leaves’ is the perfect expression of human transience and loss, those constant companions of our fleeting and precious lives.

The meaning of a good poem is never exhausted, so this book will keep me going till the last ferry comes to take me off the island to a destination unknown.

…first gave you the reading bug?

I DIDN’T much enjoy school for reasons that were probably my own fault. No teacher caught my imagination and encouraged me to learn.

So I was bored and truanted a lot, for which I was severely belted by the rector of the school using the famous Scottish leather strap or ‘tawse’ that was applied forcefully to the extended hands.

Fortunately, the local public library was close by and I started dropping in on my way home at the end of the day.

That’s where I discovered the novels by Richmal Crompton about an anarchic 11year-old schoolboy called Just William (pictured). I was hooked immediately and devoured every copy in the series I could find. The reading bug was planted and it has been operating compulsively ever since.

…left you cold?

WAR AND PeACe by Tolstoy. It’s not that it left me cold, but that it deprived me of the will to live and I feel ashamed of admitting it. It’s partly the length, which is why I have never finished Proust either.

That’s why I was both amused and encouraged by an American journalist who said you could either live your own life or read Tolstoy and Proust instead, and I chose to live my own life.

And with Tolstoy there’s also the fact that he does a lot of preaching about religion and the troubled condition of humanity. having been a preacher most of my life, maybe I am now allergic to being preached at, and the old seer of Yasnaya Polyana can certainly lay it on thick.

But who am I to talk?