My earliest reading memory
An illustrated version of Ian Fleming’s Chitty Chitty Bang Bang. I was probably three or so, in Karachi, and according to my parents I couldn’t yet read but had learned the book by heart so knew when to tell them to turn the page. I have a clear memory of looking at words on the page beneath the illustration of a flying car.
My favourite book growing up
The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe by CS Lewis. I was in a room full of adults, bored, when I first noticed this book with an appealing title on a shelf and drew it out. I entered that novel in much the same way as Lucy enters the wardrobe and emerges into Narnia, everything became wondrous when just minutes before it had been dull.
The book that changed me as a teenager
Gone With the Wind. I read it when I was 12 – so just pre-teen. I was completely drawn in by it but I also understood how abhorrent its take on history and race was. It was the first time I recognised how dangerously wrong a book can be, even when you find yourself completely immersed in it.
