Best books… Jonathan Lynn
The writer and director Jonathan Lynn, co-writer of the TV series Yes Minister and Yes, Prime Minister, picks his favourite books. His latest novel, Samaritans, is published by Endeavour Press at £7.99
Act One by Moss Hart, 1959 (St. Martin’s Griffin £16.76). The best theatre autobiography I ever read. Funny and exciting, it tells the richly entertaining story of Hart’s collaboration with the eccentric George S. Kaufman and shows how very hard it is to write a good play. This book made me want to work in the theatre.
Barchester Towers by Anthony Trollope, 1857 (Vintage £6.99). This sly, funny and greatly beloved novel is by one of our most perceptive observers of English life. Although this is about the church, Trollope is my favourite political novelist. An inspiration for me when working on Yes Minister.
Catch 22 by Joseph Heller, 1961 (Vintage £9.99). Nabokov “takes an extremely flippant approach to situations deeply tragic and pathetic”, said Heller, “and I began to try for a similar blend of the comic and tragic, so that everything that takes place seems to be grotesque yet plausible”. The result is a masterpiece.
Light Years by James Salter, 1975 (Penguin £8.99). I had never heard of Salter until recently, though I had loved Downhill Racer, a film he wrote. He seems incapable of writing a bad sentence. The book tells the story of a marriage from start to finish, an epic tale stunningly compressed into a short novel.
Our Souls at Night by Kent Haruf, 2015 (Picador £7.99). Another great American novelist who has been overlooked in Britain, with a tale of two elderly widowed people in small town Colorado and their growing love for each other. A brief, but utterly satisfying story of second chances.
Penelope Fitzgerald: A Life
by Hermione Lee, 2013 (Vintage £12.99). Engrossing biography of the brilliant, Booker Prize-winning novelist, who was loyal to her deadbeat husband, often homeless, and whose struggle with adversity meant that she didn’t publish a book until she was 58. An extraordinary story, as enthralling as Fitzgerald’s own books.