My Life in Books

On last night’s programme Sue Perkins, TV presenter, comedienne and winner of BBC’s TV conductor competition Maestro, couldn’t decide between The Very Hungry Caterpillar by Eric Carle and Crime and Punishment by Dostoevsky, so she nominated both.

This series of programmes leading up to World Book Day on March 3rd pairs up some unlikely reading companions to discuss books that have made a difference to their lives. Tonight’s guests are Clare Balding horse racing pundit and Hardeep Singh Kohli, writer and presenter obviously forgiven by the BBC for ‘sex pest’ allegations made in July 2009.

The West Swindon Library Reader’s Group I belong to have just been reading Winter Ghosts by Kate Mosse.

It’s probably not enough to describe Ms Mosse as merely a best selling author, writer of the much lauded Languedoc triology whose third volume is due out this year.

According to her website Ms Mosse is ‘Co-Founder & Honorary Director of the prestigious Orange Prize for Fiction and a campaigner for literary and reading in the UK. She advises Arts Council England on a range of reading, creative writing and literacy initiatives. A Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts, Mosse was named European Woman of Achievement for Contribution to the Arts in 2000.’

Ms Mosse has made medieval France her specialist subject, so knowing this (and having read the blurb on the back of the book) I knew what kind of read I was letting myself in for. And it was beautifully written.

Winter Ghosts is set in 1928, ten years after the death of Freddie Watson’s older brother George in the carnage on the Western Front. Unable to recover from the loss of his much loved brother, Freddie has battled unsuccessfully with depression and mental ill health. Still trying to come to terms with his grief Freddie makes a pilgrimage to the French Pyrenees. A car crash, a blizzard and a village inn lead the reader into a centuries old ghost story.

Given the writer’s credentials, why didn’t I enjoy the book and am I allowed to say I thought it was, well a tad pretentious.

Can a ghost story ever be believable? The crux of the matter must surely be that the reader engages with the characters and I’m afraid Winter Ghosts left me cold on the emotional front. And surely a vital ingredient in a ghost story should be suspense. One of the follow up recommended reads was Little Stranger by Sarah Waters, another book club read, which I thoroughly enjoyed - brimful of suspense, unanswered questions, mysterious deaths, the whole shebang.

So what books would I take on Anne’s programme. In a bookless household I found my own way into reading via the Tate Library in Brixton, South London. Like every 1950s child I read and worshipped at the temple of Enid Blyton but I also read and reread The Family From One End Street, the story of a dustman’s family written by Eve Garnett. Another favourite was Milly Molly Mandy by Joyce Lankester Brisley.

My much loved auntie Ruth bought me an abridged version of Little Women by Louisa May Alcott but it was many years before I read the book in its entirety along with the sequel Jo’s Boys. A teenage diet of historical fiction followed, including books by Jean Plaidy and Georgette Heyer.

I’m not sure how you select a favourite book, an impossible task when I have so many, but up there with the forerunners is Birdsong by Sebastian Faulks, another WWI story but with ghosts of quite a different kind.

And my thanks to Leah’s friend Mary who introduced me to A Splendid Thousand Suns by Khaled Hosseini – a book I would never have picked myself but which quite took my breath away.

My Life in Books is on BBC 2 at 6.30.

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