0:00:11 > 0:00:13APPLAUSE
0:00:16 > 0:00:20Welcome to My Life In Books, a chance for my guests to share their favourite reads.
0:00:20 > 0:00:23Joining me tonight, best selling author Robert Harris.
0:00:23 > 0:00:28He's turned his interest in politics and modern history into a publishing sensation.
0:00:28 > 0:00:34His book Fatherland, which imagines life if Hitler had won the war, has sold more than three million copies.
0:00:34 > 0:00:38Alongside him, Trinny Woodall, one half of the team that told
0:00:38 > 0:00:43a generation what to wear and, just as importantly, what not to wear.
0:00:43 > 0:00:46I hope she approves of Robert's jacket and my dress.
0:00:46 > 0:00:50If she doesn't, I'm sure she'll make it clear immediately.
0:00:50 > 0:00:52Thank you both for joining me.
0:00:52 > 0:00:54APPLAUSE
0:00:54 > 0:00:59Let's begin with childhood reads, Robert, tell us a bit about your childhood.
0:00:59 > 0:01:03Well, I was born in Nottingham in 1957 and my father
0:01:03 > 0:01:10was a printer, and I think I got a love of reading and writing right from the start with printer's ink
0:01:10 > 0:01:13in the veins, and books are very important to me.
0:01:13 > 0:01:16Libraries are very important to me.
0:01:16 > 0:01:19Obviously there were only two television channels, both
0:01:19 > 0:01:25in black and white, no computers or anything like that, and books were a main source of entertainment.
0:01:25 > 0:01:26Did your parents read to you?
0:01:26 > 0:01:33I can't really remember them reading to me, no. But I learnt to read quite early, I think I was reading
0:01:33 > 0:01:40a bit before I started school and you know it became... It was just terribly important.
0:01:40 > 0:01:42Your first choice is Just William
0:01:42 > 0:01:45by Richmal Crompton. How old were you when you were reading this?
0:01:45 > 0:01:51Well, I know that I was seven because actually almost my oldest possession
0:01:51 > 0:01:55that I have is this book which gives my name and address,
0:01:55 > 0:01:5862 Violet Road, Carlton, Notts,
0:01:58 > 0:02:01in 1964, class eight, so I know I must have been seven.
0:02:01 > 0:02:05Do you think children still like writing their name and address
0:02:05 > 0:02:08in the front of books? It's certainly a thing of the past.
0:02:08 > 0:02:12I hope they do because one used to write, "Robert Harris,
0:02:12 > 0:02:18"England, Europe, the world, the solar system, the universe." Yeah, I'm sure they still do, surely.
0:02:18 > 0:02:20Can you give us a summary of the plot?
0:02:20 > 0:02:24This is the very first Just William, I think, I've got here.
0:02:24 > 0:02:26Well, there were so many of them, and one of
0:02:26 > 0:02:29the things that's great about it is that Richmal Crompton, I never knew
0:02:29 > 0:02:31it was a woman that wrote them.
0:02:31 > 0:02:36It's quite clever because I think boys might have an antipathy to books written by women,
0:02:36 > 0:02:41and JK Rowling, you didn't know was a woman and Richmal Crompton, I thought was a man.
0:02:41 > 0:02:43The best books took place in the '30s and during the war,
0:02:43 > 0:02:47when William and his gang of Outlaws would accost a nun,
0:02:47 > 0:02:50thinking she was a parachuted German spy, for instance.
0:02:50 > 0:02:56They were all just very clever stories and they fall into that wonderful category of books that can
0:02:56 > 0:03:00be enjoyed by a child, a seven-year-old, or someone grown up,
0:03:00 > 0:03:03because they're so well written and funny.
0:03:03 > 0:03:04Can you read us a passage?
0:03:04 > 0:03:07This is a story called William Gets A Scoop.
0:03:07 > 0:03:12And he and his friends, the Outlaws, have decided they'll entertain themselves by
0:03:12 > 0:03:13creating a newspaper.
0:03:13 > 0:03:16"What'll we have?" said Ginger. "In the newspaper, I mean."
0:03:16 > 0:03:20"They have news in newspapers", said Henry, simply.
0:03:20 > 0:03:24"There isn't any news", said Ginger. "My father's always saying there isn't any news.
0:03:24 > 0:03:27"Whenever my mother asks him at breakfast what news
0:03:27 > 0:03:30"there is in his newspaper, he always says there isn't any."
0:03:30 > 0:03:32"We can invent news, can't we?" said William.
0:03:32 > 0:03:35"I bet that's what real ones do, invent it if there isn't any."
0:03:35 > 0:03:40"It's going to be jolly difficult inventing news", said Douglas. "And there's laws against it.
0:03:40 > 0:03:42"My aunt once knew someone that was 'ad up by the police
0:03:42 > 0:03:45"for saying something about someone else that wasn't true.
0:03:45 > 0:03:49"It frightened her so much she got an awful disease called jaundice and turned yellow all over."
0:03:49 > 0:03:53"That's right" said William. "Start making objections, soon as ever
0:03:53 > 0:03:55"I get a good idea, you all start making objections."
0:03:55 > 0:03:58And it's just, you know, it's great fun.
0:03:58 > 0:04:01It's a great adult joke as well as being a good joke for children.
0:04:01 > 0:04:04Trinny, your childhood, it was a much travelled childhood, wasn't it?
0:04:04 > 0:04:06It was, I grew up mainly out of England, in France
0:04:06 > 0:04:09and Germany and Switzerland, so I went to boarding school.
0:04:09 > 0:04:11- From an early age? - From an early age.
0:04:11 > 0:04:14- How early?- From six and a half.
0:04:14 > 0:04:18Until 16. And I remember, actually, I didn't know how to read
0:04:18 > 0:04:21at my first boarding school, it took me a long time.
0:04:21 > 0:04:25And then when I did I really got into books, but I did have a favourite author for a while.
0:04:25 > 0:04:30You did, your very favourite author, Trinny, was Barbara Cartland.
0:04:30 > 0:04:33This one's The Love Pirate, but does it matter which one?
0:04:33 > 0:04:36They just go blindly from one to the next.
0:04:36 > 0:04:40- They'll all end, this is how they all end. - Give us a thumbnail sketch.
0:04:40 > 0:04:43It could be any of them. Lord Sayer, he's probably the bad one or the good one,
0:04:43 > 0:04:49or the prince could be the bad one, and she's got no money and she's sort of impoverished.
0:04:49 > 0:04:52But she's got a good background and some big drama happens
0:04:52 > 0:04:55he has to rescue her from, and then she suddenly realises she loves him.
0:04:55 > 0:04:58And Barbara Cartland never talks about sex,
0:04:58 > 0:05:02but see which bit of this thing you think is the sex bit, OK?
0:05:02 > 0:05:05"I love you", Bertilla answered.
0:05:05 > 0:05:07"I love you until I feel as if I were made of love,
0:05:07 > 0:05:10"that everything I am is yours, completely and absolutely."
0:05:10 > 0:05:12"That is what I want", he answered.
0:05:12 > 0:05:16Then he pulled her into his arms and he kissed her until the garden seemed to whirl around her.
0:05:16 > 0:05:21The colours, the scent of the flowers and the flight of the butterflies seemed to mingle with
0:05:21 > 0:05:26the love which filled her heart and mind until she became a part of him and they were indivisible.
0:05:26 > 0:05:29That's when they had it off.
0:05:29 > 0:05:32There was only love, a love that was just part of divine, sacred and unspoilt, true and
0:05:32 > 0:05:35faithful between one man and one woman, now and for all eternity.
0:05:35 > 0:05:39"I love you. God, how much I love you", Lord Sayer said hoarsely. Sorry, should have said,
0:05:39 > 0:05:42- IN DEEP VOICE:- "I love you. God, how much I love you."
0:05:42 > 0:05:44Faintly, against his lips, Bertilla
0:05:44 > 0:05:49echoed his words, "I love you, I love you with all, all of me." And that's it.
0:05:49 > 0:05:52I had about 70 of her books, you know, and
0:05:52 > 0:05:58then I created this sort of lending library for people, and I had this very sweet girl from Nigeria,
0:05:58 > 0:06:01there were lots of people from lots of different countries at the school,
0:06:01 > 0:06:06so their first introduction to English literature was Barbara Cartland, via me.
0:06:06 > 0:06:09You went into retail early, then?
0:06:09 > 0:06:12I went into retail early, but when I think about it now, when I was asked for my choices,
0:06:12 > 0:06:15I thought to myself, "All these books are about makeovers."
0:06:15 > 0:06:20Ironically. They're about, you know, somebody born, kind of with, this...
0:06:20 > 0:06:24Always the life is a terrible life, or they're an orphan or whatever,
0:06:24 > 0:06:27and then there's the dangerous, you know,
0:06:27 > 0:06:32naughty duke who wants to kind of ravish them and then there's the good lord who wants to get them.
0:06:32 > 0:06:36And she hates him and he hates her and she thinks he hates her even more, and they end up together.
0:06:36 > 0:06:41You and Susannah did a wonderful spoof at the end of last year,
0:06:41 > 0:06:47which was online and then shown on Channel Four, here's a clip of the two of you sending yourselves up.
0:06:48 > 0:06:52Without any lucrative contracts or representation,
0:06:52 > 0:06:55Trinny and Susannah have decided to find themselves a new agent...
0:06:55 > 0:06:58What do you reckon then, nice bit of shmutter, innit?
0:06:58 > 0:07:00Two buttons may be better than three just cos of your...
0:07:00 > 0:07:04Because you're kind of heavy set at the top...
0:07:04 > 0:07:08See, there you go, straight away.
0:07:08 > 0:07:11- What? - Your problem. You're too honest.
0:07:11 > 0:07:14You wanna look at that Chinese woman, the tall one with the bins.
0:07:14 > 0:07:16- Gok Wan.- Wok. - And he's a man, yeah...
0:07:16 > 0:07:19- He's a what?- He's a man. - Doesn't matter.
0:07:19 > 0:07:22He was so good, the agent.
0:07:22 > 0:07:24Robert, your next book...
0:07:24 > 0:07:27- By way of a change! - By way of a change.
0:07:27 > 0:07:31It's a formidable book. It's The Rise And Fall Of The Third Reich
0:07:31 > 0:07:34by William L Shirer. How old were you when you bought this?
0:07:34 > 0:07:35- Well...- Or did you buy it?
0:07:35 > 0:07:40This sounds really sick, I mean, when Trinny was reading Barbara Cartland,
0:07:40 > 0:07:44and the contrast between the male and female species, I came by,
0:07:44 > 0:07:50we went on a school exchange to Paris and I bought this at the airport, and I suppose it was the
0:07:50 > 0:07:57first sort of big proper history book that I bought and read, and it had a great impact on me and from then on
0:07:57 > 0:08:02I was very interested in the war and in Germany, Nazi Germany in particular.
0:08:02 > 0:08:04Tell us about what is in the book.
0:08:04 > 0:08:11Well, this is an amazing book because Shirer was the CBS radio correspondent in Berlin,
0:08:11 > 0:08:15late '30s, and stayed there until Germany came into the war in 1941,
0:08:15 > 0:08:20so he was actually the accredited war correspondent who saw what was happening. And after the war
0:08:20 > 0:08:27he attended Nuremburg, he got the trial papers and documents and he turned them into this enormous book.
0:08:27 > 0:08:32A combination of eyewitness testimony and the actual historical record.
0:08:32 > 0:08:38And it is a good book and it's still widely read and considered quite good for its time.
0:08:38 > 0:08:42And there's one particular part in it which has always stuck in my mind.
0:08:42 > 0:08:47Shirer travelled to France when the French surrendered, and he goes into the wood
0:08:47 > 0:08:54when Hitler has arranged for... The dining car in which the Armistice was
0:08:54 > 0:08:58signed at the end of the First World War is brought out and the French are
0:08:58 > 0:09:05made to sign the surrender in 1940 there. And Shirer is there, and he describes it.
0:09:05 > 0:09:10"I observed his face. It was grave, solemn, yet brimming with revenge.
0:09:10 > 0:09:13"There was also in it, as in his springy step,
0:09:13 > 0:09:18"a note of the triumphant conqueror, the defier of the world.
0:09:18 > 0:09:22"There was something else, a sort of scornful inner joy at being present
0:09:22 > 0:09:28"at this great reversal of fate, a reversal he himself had wrought."
0:09:28 > 0:09:33It describes him, you know, going up the steps to take the surrender
0:09:33 > 0:09:35and executing this little dance and so on,
0:09:35 > 0:09:40and it brought history vividly alive to me, and when I wrote my novel Fatherland, actually I
0:09:40 > 0:09:46put in it a correspondent from Germany, from America, who's working in Berlin.
0:09:46 > 0:09:52What came first, the choice of book and then the subjects that you went on to write about
0:09:52 > 0:09:55or were you already thinking about that period of history?
0:09:55 > 0:10:02I think I must already have been thinking because there was such a cultural domination, understandably.
0:10:02 > 0:10:06I mean, in the 1960s we were only 15 years after the end of the war.
0:10:06 > 0:10:12Which is what, for us to go back to sort of 1996 or something? You know, it's no time at all.
0:10:12 > 0:10:19And so the comics were full of, you know, commandos and war stories,
0:10:19 > 0:10:21television, documentaries,
0:10:21 > 0:10:24everything was the war, Alistair MacLean and so on.
0:10:24 > 0:10:30So I think that this was, this came out of an interest which was already then around, and then I got more and
0:10:30 > 0:10:34more interested, and then of course one realised that the war
0:10:34 > 0:10:37was much more complicated than I'd been brought up on.
0:10:37 > 0:10:39The thread of my life really,
0:10:39 > 0:10:45has been understanding this great event which took place just before I was born.
0:10:45 > 0:10:47Did you know you wanted to be a writer by then?
0:10:47 > 0:10:51Yes, I started to want to be a writer when I was about eight,
0:10:51 > 0:10:54when I started on Just William, and I never really deviated from that.
0:10:54 > 0:10:58Well, you sort of did, because you went into television as your first job.
0:10:58 > 0:11:02Well, that was just to earn some money, quite frankly.
0:11:02 > 0:11:03We've got a clip of you.
0:11:03 > 0:11:07Oh no, you haven't? I know what clip it's going to be as well!
0:11:07 > 0:11:10'This is what it's like being on the campaign trail'
0:11:10 > 0:11:13with the Prime Minister in 1983.
0:11:13 > 0:11:16It's as far removed from traditional campaigning
0:11:16 > 0:11:18as it's possible to imagine.
0:11:18 > 0:11:20There aren't many voters in sight.
0:11:20 > 0:11:24What there are are hundreds of members of the media, who swarm around the Prime Minister
0:11:24 > 0:11:31follow her every move, and the idea from the Conservatives' point of view is to get the best possible exposure
0:11:31 > 0:11:33on the TV news that evening.
0:11:33 > 0:11:39- What do you think of his haircut? - I just love Maggie Thatcher's face!
0:11:40 > 0:11:46Trinny, your next choice, you're now 22 and you have your first job,
0:11:46 > 0:11:48and it's Perfume by Patrick Suskind.
0:11:48 > 0:11:51Why this book?
0:11:51 > 0:11:55I went to Paris to do research on a fragrance and I worked with this old perfume house called Caron.
0:11:55 > 0:12:00And the man who ran it was called Sandy Bertrand and he used to be the editor of Vogue,
0:12:00 > 0:12:05kind of incredibly glamorous Frenchman, and I was very insecure there
0:12:05 > 0:12:08and everyone was very sophisticated, and the French are quite intimidating
0:12:08 > 0:12:11and unless you spoke perfect French they won't speak to you in English,
0:12:11 > 0:12:14so I'd speak French with the Algerian taxi drivers.
0:12:14 > 0:12:17And Sandy said to me, "You need to really understand the essence of
0:12:17 > 0:12:22"the nose of perfume so you must read this book." And it just came out then.
0:12:22 > 0:12:24And I read the book in my sort of lonely little
0:12:24 > 0:12:31hotel room that I stayed in when I went over, and I found it such an evocative book about smell.
0:12:31 > 0:12:34Can you give us a brief summary of the story?
0:12:34 > 0:12:37The protagonist is a man who grows up in Paris in the 18th century, in the slums,
0:12:37 > 0:12:41and when he's very young he's in an orphanage, his mother's abandoned him,
0:12:41 > 0:12:45and he has an incredible nose and he smells all the different woods in the fire.
0:12:45 > 0:12:48He teams up with a perfumier, and this guy by way of his nose
0:12:48 > 0:12:52creates the most amazing fragrance for him so he becomes feted, but then he becomes
0:12:52 > 0:12:58obsessed with the smell of women before they lose their virginity and he becomes a murderer, and he
0:12:58 > 0:13:03goes round France murdering these women for the smell and creating this ultimate fragrance.
0:13:03 > 0:13:06What happened to the perfume you were going to come up with?
0:13:06 > 0:13:09It sort of never happened, we just dabbled for ages and I met
0:13:09 > 0:13:13the nose man and he sits with this row of about 70 different,
0:13:13 > 0:13:18or 80 different smells and it was so interesting and I do have, you know, my...
0:13:18 > 0:13:20All my senses are led and my...
0:13:20 > 0:13:26I have a very bad memory, but smell is my strongest connection with the past.
0:13:26 > 0:13:31Robert, your next book is George Orwell's 1984. Why this choice?
0:13:31 > 0:13:33This is just a wonderful book.
0:13:33 > 0:13:41It's about a loner in a totalitarian state, it's about an individual pitted against power.
0:13:41 > 0:13:45And what it is, supremely, Orwell was a brilliant journalist,
0:13:45 > 0:13:50but if he'd written this as he could have written it,
0:13:50 > 0:13:53as a non-fiction book just about power and the way it operates and so on,
0:13:53 > 0:13:57it might have been very good, but it would have been totally forgotten.
0:13:57 > 0:14:05Because he transformed his ideas into a story and characters and he created a world, he made something which,
0:14:05 > 0:14:08a work of the imagination, which transcended its time.
0:14:08 > 0:14:11I think it's probably the most important novel ever written.
0:14:11 > 0:14:17Not the best novel ever written, but the most important because after it things were never quite the same.
0:14:17 > 0:14:20You've brought your own copy in here.
0:14:20 > 0:14:25Yes, well, I've had many copies of 1984 over the years, but after I'd written Fatherland,
0:14:25 > 0:14:28I was then struggling to write my second novel and Jeremy Paxman,
0:14:28 > 0:14:31who's an old journalistic friend of mine,
0:14:31 > 0:14:36he gave me this as a present, which is the facsimile edition of 1984,
0:14:36 > 0:14:39and he said, "You think you're having problems writing Enigma?
0:14:39 > 0:14:42"Look at what Orwell had to go through writing 1984."
0:14:42 > 0:14:47I don't know whether you can see it, but it just shows the enormous amount of crossings-out
0:14:47 > 0:14:49and rewritings that Orwell did.
0:14:49 > 0:14:52And it's the whole manuscript, reproduced,
0:14:52 > 0:14:57and you just see the way that Orwell, who was dying by this point of TB,
0:14:57 > 0:15:01rewrote the book and the struggle that he had to get it as he wanted it.
0:15:01 > 0:15:05And it's a very moving, powerful document, I think.
0:15:05 > 0:15:08For me, it's very interesting because it shows you how...
0:15:08 > 0:15:11The perfection of what you get between covers.
0:15:11 > 0:15:14There's a lot of sweat and misery gone into getting there.
0:15:14 > 0:15:17- Do you rework your books a lot? - Yes, as I write, all the time.
0:15:17 > 0:15:21I probably rewrite passages ten or 20 times at least, to try and get them right.
0:15:21 > 0:15:24And it's like, you know, it's like a tuning fork or something.
0:15:24 > 0:15:28You get as close as you can to what is in your head.
0:15:28 > 0:15:30Trinny, do you reread favourite books?
0:15:31 > 0:15:38I do, cos what I tend to do, I have a lot of books at home. I have, you know, in my kitchen,
0:15:38 > 0:15:40in my sitting room, upstairs in my office,
0:15:40 > 0:15:44I have bookcase after bookcase and I lend books to friends.
0:15:44 > 0:15:46Do you still keep a note like you did at school?
0:15:46 > 0:15:48No, but what I do is I immediately remember to buy it again.
0:15:48 > 0:15:53Cos I kind of love it, but they're like old friends so I do them, I sort of categorise my books
0:15:53 > 0:15:57cos I kind of like, like you, I like my Second World War section, that's a big section,
0:15:57 > 0:16:01then the classics section, then stuff about fashion etc,
0:16:01 > 0:16:03so it's kind of whole different things and I hate, you know,
0:16:03 > 0:16:06if I've lent a favourite book, to not have it there still.
0:16:06 > 0:16:08It's a map of your life, I think, a bookshelf,
0:16:08 > 0:16:13it shows your intellectual life, which you can have if you've got the books and you keep them.
0:16:13 > 0:16:16Trinny, this next book you read in your 20s.
0:16:16 > 0:16:21And you'd come out of a treatment centre for drug and drink addiction.
0:16:21 > 0:16:23Yes!
0:16:23 > 0:16:24Not a self-help book.
0:16:24 > 0:16:27- Not a self-help book at all. - But The Count Of Monte Cristo
0:16:27 > 0:16:30by Alexandre Dumas, tell us about this choice.
0:16:30 > 0:16:35It was the first classic book I read that I hadn't been obliged to read for school.
0:16:35 > 0:16:40This is a book of somebody really juggling with the concept of revenge.
0:16:40 > 0:16:43They're really hard done by, they're really screwed, they're sent to prison, they think they'll
0:16:43 > 0:16:47be there for life, they have an opportunity to escape and they escape, and it's
0:16:47 > 0:16:51how they decide to deal with all the people who screwed up their life.
0:16:51 > 0:16:53They don't turn the other cheek.
0:16:53 > 0:16:56No, they sure don't, darling. You and I would both know about that.
0:16:56 > 0:16:58So I'm just going to...
0:16:58 > 0:17:01Revealing my age, and get my glasses on.
0:17:02 > 0:17:04OK.
0:17:04 > 0:17:08"The natural repugnance to commit such a crime prevented
0:17:08 > 0:17:12"its idea from occurring to you, and so it ever is with all simple
0:17:12 > 0:17:17"and allowable things, our natural instincts keep us from deviating from the strict line of duty.
0:17:17 > 0:17:22"The tiger, whose nature teaches him to delight in shedding blood, needs
0:17:22 > 0:17:28"but his sense of smell to know when his prey is within his reach and by following this instinct he is unable
0:17:28 > 0:17:32"to measure the force necessary to enable him to spring on his victim.
0:17:32 > 0:17:36"But man, on the contrary, loathes the idea of blood.
0:17:36 > 0:17:40"It's not just the law of social life that inspires him with a shrinking dread of taking life,
0:17:40 > 0:17:43"his natural construction and physiological formation."
0:17:43 > 0:17:47It's kind of that struggle with, "How far am I going to go?"
0:17:47 > 0:17:50Can you cope with sad endings and sad books?
0:17:50 > 0:17:53I think books do need sometimes sad endings cos they need you to think.
0:17:53 > 0:17:58I like to read a book to make me either think more about my life, think, you know, how...
0:17:58 > 0:18:06I sometimes do read a book to escape, and if it's powerful enough, it does that for you.
0:18:06 > 0:18:10Certainly a sad ending on your next choice, Robert.
0:18:10 > 0:18:11It's The End of The Affair by Graham Greene.
0:18:11 > 0:18:16This is very much the influence of your father showing here, isn't it?
0:18:16 > 0:18:22Yes, he left school when he was 14, he didn't pass the 11-plus and he became self taught.
0:18:22 > 0:18:28And he read Greene with absolute devotion,
0:18:28 > 0:18:31he read everything that Greene ever wrote, and
0:18:31 > 0:18:35that was quite an influence on me, the notion that you could,
0:18:35 > 0:18:38as Greene does, he writes brilliant stories
0:18:38 > 0:18:42and his characters are very strong and they are entertaining books.
0:18:42 > 0:18:47And they reach a large audience. But they also have high literary quality, and The End Of The Affair
0:18:47 > 0:18:50is a superb example of that.
0:18:50 > 0:18:55It's a very complicated story in the way it's told, it flashes back
0:18:55 > 0:18:59and forth, it's an account of a love affair that starts just before war
0:18:59 > 0:19:06is declared in 1939 and ends in a V-bomb attack in June 1944.
0:19:06 > 0:19:11It's the writer looking back and trying to reconstruct this,
0:19:11 > 0:19:15and it's a very haunting book and powerful image of a doomed love affair,
0:19:15 > 0:19:19and it's dedicated, the book is dedicated "To C".
0:19:19 > 0:19:24And "C" was Catherine Woolston with whom Greene himself had a...
0:19:24 > 0:19:28- Long affair. - ..long and quite sad affair.
0:19:28 > 0:19:35There's slightly too much Roman Catholic theology in it for my taste, I have to say.
0:19:35 > 0:19:39- Also, the Catholicism in this one is quite implausible, really. - It is very implausible.
0:19:39 > 0:19:43The notion that she's a sort of saint or that she stops the affair because...
0:19:43 > 0:19:44Basically what happens is,
0:19:44 > 0:19:53they're in bed together, there's a V-1 bomb comes down and she gets down on her knees and prays,
0:19:53 > 0:19:59"Let him not be dead", her lover. "And if he's not dead, God, then I promise I'll never see him again."
0:19:59 > 0:20:07And then he walks through the door and her diary's included and she, she's got what she wanted
0:20:07 > 0:20:11but at the price of never seeing him again, and she hates God as a result.
0:20:11 > 0:20:15It is very heavy Catholic guilt, but it's wonderful. I think he's a terrific writer.
0:20:15 > 0:20:22I don't think anyone has come close to replacing him in British literature since he died.
0:20:22 > 0:20:26Trinny, your next book choice is Extremely Loud And Incredibly Close,
0:20:26 > 0:20:30Jonathan Safran Foer. Tell us about this.
0:20:30 > 0:20:32It's a very sweet book
0:20:32 > 0:20:35that is about a little boy who's eight
0:20:35 > 0:20:40and his father was killed in the 9/11 World Trade Center, and he,
0:20:40 > 0:20:44at the very beginning of the book, is... There's some messages, and you know,
0:20:44 > 0:20:50I heard lots of messages on the TV of people who were dying and called their loved ones.
0:20:50 > 0:20:54And his father says, "Hi, I'm OK, I'm in the thing, I'm OK." Then two minutes later something else,
0:20:54 > 0:20:57then ten minutes later something else.
0:20:57 > 0:21:01And then, "I'm going to die, I'm not going to get out." And he hears it first
0:21:01 > 0:21:05and he decides to hide it from his mother, so he changes the tape and his mother, at the same time,
0:21:05 > 0:21:06has got the call saying that he's died,
0:21:06 > 0:21:09and she decides not to tell her son exactly how it's happened
0:21:09 > 0:21:13so he's armed with this knowledge of what really happened and she's trying to hide the truth.
0:21:13 > 0:21:18It's just, you know, this little boy is so intelligent and so worldly
0:21:18 > 0:21:23for an eight-year-old, and he finds a little key in his father's dressing room
0:21:23 > 0:21:27and he thinks this key, which is in a little envelope with the word "Black" written on it,
0:21:27 > 0:21:30is going to be the answer to finding out about his father.
0:21:30 > 0:21:35He goes on this quest around New York and he meets 385 people by the name of Black.
0:21:35 > 0:21:39He finds people along the way to help, he's only eight, he skips school...
0:21:39 > 0:21:41Where were you when you read it?
0:21:41 > 0:21:45I was in New York, actually. Well, I was in the States making a show and...
0:21:45 > 0:21:49I don't know, it's just certain times when you think of where you were when you heard.
0:21:49 > 0:21:54I was in Guildford in a department store making a What Not to Wear programme when 9/11 happened,
0:21:54 > 0:21:57and I remember nobody knew what really happened and it was such a...
0:21:57 > 0:21:59Not a bigger deal than it was,
0:21:59 > 0:22:04but for a second we thought an atom bomb had gone off in America or something so it's just...
0:22:04 > 0:22:06It puts it in perspective of one small boy's life.
0:22:06 > 0:22:12Now we've heard about your childhood reads, the books that have influenced you later on.
0:22:12 > 0:22:15We're going to move on to books that you've simply enjoyed.
0:22:15 > 0:22:17Guilty pleasures perhaps, beach reads.
0:22:17 > 0:22:21For you, Robert, it's Kingsley Amis' Lucky Jim.
0:22:21 > 0:22:26- Yeah.- And of course you've got a nice... Is it a first edition?
0:22:26 > 0:22:29- No it's not, it's just an old, it cost me 70p.- Tell us about it.
0:22:29 > 0:22:31Well, it's a great book.
0:22:31 > 0:22:38It's one of those books that I read every four or five years, I suppose, so I must have read it five or six
0:22:38 > 0:22:42times, at least, and it makes me laugh and it's just
0:22:42 > 0:22:45a very cheerful, heart-warming story,
0:22:45 > 0:22:49and it's a great attack on pomposity and it's very funny about academic life.
0:22:49 > 0:22:52- He's a young university... - He's a young university lecturer who's lumbered
0:22:52 > 0:22:54with a terribly neurotic girlfriend,
0:22:54 > 0:22:58who he eventually manages to dump in favour of this sort of shimmering beauty.
0:22:58 > 0:23:01And the epigraph is,
0:23:01 > 0:23:06"Oh, Lucky Jim, how I envy him. Oh, Lucky Jim, how I envy him."
0:23:06 > 0:23:11And there are many scrapes and adventures in it, and, I don't know,
0:23:11 > 0:23:15it's just, it's just immensely cheerful, you know.
0:23:15 > 0:23:20I do think that humour... This is a dated book, it's set in the '50s, but the humour in it
0:23:20 > 0:23:26still... It's still very relevant and there's a wonderful passage here,
0:23:26 > 0:23:29probably the most famous passage in the book, a description of
0:23:29 > 0:23:37waking up with a hangover, which is as fresh today as it was when Amis wrote it in the 1950s.
0:23:37 > 0:23:39- Shall I read it?- Yes, please.
0:23:39 > 0:23:42We've all been here, I think, or most of us.
0:23:42 > 0:23:44"Dixon was alive again.
0:23:44 > 0:23:48"Consciousness was upon him before he could get out of the way.
0:23:48 > 0:23:54"Not for him the slow, gracious wandering from the halls of sleep, but a summary forcible ejection.
0:23:54 > 0:23:57"He lay sprawled, too wicked to move,
0:23:57 > 0:24:02"spewed up like a broken spider crab on the tarry shingle of the morning.
0:24:02 > 0:24:07"The light did him harm, but not as much as looking at things did.
0:24:07 > 0:24:12"He resolved, having done it once, never to move his eyeballs again.
0:24:12 > 0:24:18"A dusty thudding in his head made the scene before him beat like a pulse.
0:24:18 > 0:24:21"His mouth had been used as a latrine
0:24:21 > 0:24:25"by some small creature of the night, and then as its mausoleum.
0:24:25 > 0:24:30"During the night, too, he'd somehow been on a cross country run
0:24:30 > 0:24:36"and then been expertly beaten up by secret police. He felt bad."
0:24:36 > 0:24:39- LAUGHTER - Have you gone on reading Amis?
0:24:39 > 0:24:43I did read most of Kingsley Amis, yes, I think. I didn't
0:24:43 > 0:24:48read the last couple but I did, and I find him a very interesting writer.
0:24:48 > 0:24:54More interesting, dare I say it, than his son, because he experimented with lots of different forms.
0:24:54 > 0:25:00He was certainly, of course, misogynistic and his views were quite repugnant to me in many ways,
0:25:00 > 0:25:07and in fact his last published piece as a writer was a bad review of my second novel, Enigma,
0:25:07 > 0:25:11in The Spectator. He promptly dropped dead after he'd written it!
0:25:11 > 0:25:17But for all that, I willingly forgive him because I think he was such a good writer and so funny.
0:25:17 > 0:25:24Very funny. Very funny. You have been entirely original, Trinny, for your guilty pleasure.
0:25:24 > 0:25:28It's The New York Times Crossword Puzzle Dictionary.
0:25:28 > 0:25:30Why is this?
0:25:30 > 0:25:31Well, I find...
0:25:31 > 0:25:36I'm travelling a lot at the moment, I'm making a show in about ten countries around the world
0:25:36 > 0:25:38and you can never get one newspaper.
0:25:38 > 0:25:41So the only newspaper I get is the Herald Tribune,
0:25:41 > 0:25:45which is a relatively well-read paper, but it's excerpts from the New York Times.
0:25:45 > 0:25:50And it will always have the crossword in it, so, wherever I am, I know that I can do it.
0:25:50 > 0:25:55And it's a kind of weird crossword and it's not a cryptic crossword,
0:25:55 > 0:25:59but it's a sort of lateral thinking, so there'll always be a theme of the week and you have to work it out.
0:25:59 > 0:26:01- This book... - OK, show us how it works.
0:26:01 > 0:26:05Cos it's not a normal dictionary, is it?
0:26:05 > 0:26:09It's not a normal dictionary, so let's say I am looking at it now, have to put my glasses on again.
0:26:09 > 0:26:13Looking at it now, so I'm trying to find one which would be...
0:26:13 > 0:26:18OK, "very", all right so "very" could mean many different things.
0:26:18 > 0:26:21Four letters, "very". OK, so I look up "very".
0:26:21 > 0:26:24Have you got it ready, Robert, the answer?
0:26:24 > 0:26:26- I've no idea.- Four letters, "very", come on, Robert.
0:26:26 > 0:26:29I can't do crosswords, especially cryptic ones.
0:26:29 > 0:26:32It's not cryptic, Robert. OK, "very".
0:26:32 > 0:26:33I'm sitting it out.
0:26:33 > 0:26:37No, you're not, you're taking part, it's all about taking part.
0:26:37 > 0:26:39Let's see, "very". OK, so what it would do is, it will
0:26:39 > 0:26:44have from a two-letter word to an 11-letter word, the words for "very", so it starts with "so"
0:26:44 > 0:26:47and it ends with "absolutely".
0:26:47 > 0:26:52- But we want four.- We want four, so four could be "braw", which is really American, "It's braw good."
0:26:52 > 0:26:57Dead, fell, fool, just, main, much, pure, rare, real, same,
0:26:57 > 0:27:02- self, such, tres, well, asai. - I'd question half of those.
0:27:02 > 0:27:08I'd question asai as well, but the thing is, once I know the answer to something else, OK,
0:27:08 > 0:27:12I would then go down and think, "It's going to be that one because that's got an A in it."
0:27:12 > 0:27:15But it keeps me going. It stops the Alzheimer's.
0:27:15 > 0:27:20Thank you, Trinny. Robert, if you had to choose just one of your books to recommend, which would it be?
0:27:20 > 0:27:24Oh, heavens. That's very hard.
0:27:24 > 0:27:27Do you know, I think for sentimental reasons I'd say Just William.
0:27:27 > 0:27:35I just think that they are brilliant and anyone can enjoy them and their children too, and I think a book
0:27:35 > 0:27:39- where a whole family can meet without being too sentimental about it, is a great thing.- Trinny?
0:27:39 > 0:27:42The Count of Monte Cristo because I think most ages can read it.
0:27:42 > 0:27:47And, Trinny, what do you think your choices say about you?
0:27:47 > 0:27:49Eclectic.
0:27:49 > 0:27:52Very much about the mood I'm in at the stage in my life.
0:27:52 > 0:27:57Robert, what is interesting about your choice is, I work it out,
0:27:57 > 0:28:01they only span from about 1940 to about 1956.
0:28:01 > 0:28:05Yes, it's rather frightening, actually, now you point it out.
0:28:05 > 0:28:10I was born out of my time, I think, and I've been thrashing about ever since.
0:28:10 > 0:28:15I do find that period, the war period, the most interesting.
0:28:15 > 0:28:18I mean, war is awful of course, but nevertheless
0:28:18 > 0:28:25it does call forth qualities from that generation that I don't think we can even dream of, actually.
0:28:25 > 0:28:30Well, there we are. Thank you to Robert Harris and Trinny Woodall for joining me on My Life In Books.
0:28:30 > 0:28:33APPLAUSE
0:28:33 > 0:28:35That's the end of the show and, alas, the end of the series.
0:28:35 > 0:28:39Details of all the books we've discussed are on the website...
0:28:42 > 0:28:43Thank you for watching.
0:28:59 > 0:29:02Subtitles by Red Bee Media Ltd