Everything changes so everything can stay the same. In the beginning I read a lot. I read paperback books. The Famous Five, the Secret Seven and all that stuff. I had – have, actually – all 21 Famous Five books. They’re in paperback, apart from the fifth one, Five Go Off in a Caravan, which is in hardback. A present from my nan. Nice. But I preferred paperbacks. I’ve never seen the point of hardbacks. They’re unwieldy, harder to hold in bed, especially under the sheets when I was supposed to be asleep.
In my teens I raced through Agatha Christie, Alistair MacLean and the like, and Reader’s Digest too, countless editions of which were lined up beside every toilet in the house. Then schooling started interfering with my tastes and I got into Thomas Hardy in a big way, and other big thick, proper paperback novels. After my A-levels I went cycling in France with a mate, which was a miserable experience, saved only by the enjoyment I got from reading Anna Karenina, the battered doorstop edition of which I still have but am fearful of looking at lest it completely falls apart.
