Book Talk for Book Week

1. Do you have a favourite book, poem or graphic novel?
This is an almost impossible ask but if you push me – The English Patient.

2. What book made the biggest impression on you when growing up?
I adored the whole Swallows and Amazons series.

3. What are you reading right now?
Loving by Henry Green, a 1945 novel about life in an Irish country house. It is not an easy read but the dialogue is brilliantly written.

4. Which do you prefer – audio book, e-book or a physical book – and why?
Physical book every time. Too much of my life is digital and I love the feel of a book.

1. Do you have a favourite book, poem or graphic novel?
I'll be cheeky and give you a couple. Cooking is my favourite past time but great food writers don't just provide recipes, they bring you into another world. One of the very best is our own Diana Henry. I'll pick Food from Plenty, which changed my kitchen forever. I’ve always loved the concept of the great American novel and Cormac McCarthy’s All the Pretty Horses is in that category for me.

2. What book made the biggest impression on you when growing up?
The Neverending Story - Michael Ende
Are you there God? It’s me, Margaret by Judy Blume

3. What are you reading right now?
Prisoners of Geography- Tim Marshall
Impossible Creatures, The Poisoned King - Katherine Rundell (to my son!)

4. Which do you prefer – audio book, e-book or a physical book – and why?
I'd always have said physical books but now that I spend a good third of my life in the car, audiobooks are taking over. It depends a lot on the narration though - when the author is reading, it can really add something, like the spectacular All Fours by Miranda July.

1. Do you have a favourite book, poem or graphic novel?
This is like being told you have to choose your favourite child!
Book – This Thing of Darkness, by Harry Thompson, or A Gentleman in Moscow, by Amor Towles, or Alone In Berlin, by Hans Fallada, or The Goldfinch, by Donna Tartt.
Poem – St Botolph’s, by Ted Hughes
Graphic novel – Herge’s Adventures of Tintin

2. What book made the biggest impression on you when growing up?
The Warlock of Firetop Mountain and the entire Choose Your Own Adventure series of the early 1980s. I devoured them all.

3. What are you reading right now?
The Land in Winter, by Andrew Mitchell

4. Which do you prefer – audio book, e-book or a physical book and why?
A physical book – escaping from screens with real words on paper is a cherished bliss.

1. Do you have a favourite book, poem or graphic novel?
In recent years I've enjoyed almost every book I've read from a publishing house called Persephone. They publish primarily female, often long forgotten writers from the early twentieth century. A recent favourite was The Shuttle by Frances Hodgson Burnett, she's better known for her children's literature.

2. What book made the biggest impression on you when growing up?
My Mum is a voracious reader and she encouraged that in her three daughters. From a young age I had a clear affinity with female stories, particularly those that focused on sisterhood: Little Women, Pride and Prejudice. But as a child I read and re-read the Famine Trilogy by Martia Conlon-McKenna. I ended up writing my university dissertation on it!

3. What are you reading right now?
I always tend to have a few books on the go. I'm currently moving between Edna O'Brien's Country Girls Trilogy, more encouragement from my mother! I'm also re-reading some Edith Wharton novellas and I'm dipping my toe in a rather depressing non-fiction about Victorian women's prisons-harrowing stuff.

4. Which do you prefer – audio book, e-book or a physical book?
I do rather like the solidity of a physical book, but every December as the festive season begins I listen to a particular reading of Murder on the Orient Express - sometimes you can’t beat a mellifluous voice telling you stories!

1. Do you have a favourite book, poem or graphic novel?
My most precious book is Geoff Hamilton’s practical gardening course. My parents bought it for me when I was 10 and just getting into gardening. Geoff was the presenter of Gardeners' World on TV at the time. I never met him but I went to his garden for BBC Gardeners’ Corner last year and got his son Nick to write in it.

2. What book made the biggest impression on you when growing up?
I loved all of Roald Dahl’s books, in particular the Vicar of Nibbleswick. That was my dad’s job and so I found it particularly funny when the vicar got his words mixed up - referring to almighty dog! Dahl wrote it in support of the Dyslexia Institute.

3. What are you reading right now?
A lot of my reading centres around my job and I have never been a great one for fiction. Right now I am reading Beth Chatto’s The Shade Garden. She was a great gardener and she shows how much potential there is to make shady outdoor spaces look wonderful by using the right plants in the right place.

4. Which do you prefer – audio book, e-book or a physical book?
Definitely a physical book – I will nod off to an audiobook within the first five minutes - no matter the subject!