0:00:15 > 0:00:20Welcome to My Life In Books, a chance for our guests to share some of their favourite reads.
0:00:20 > 0:00:25With me tonight, what I suppose you could call a TV couple. Comedian and writer Sue Perkins,
0:00:25 > 0:00:31winner of the conductor's baton in the BBC series Maestro, and possibly
0:00:31 > 0:00:35the only civilian to conduct a full orchestra at the Proms.
0:00:35 > 0:00:37I think so, and the way I did it, probably the last.
0:00:37 > 0:00:43OK. Alongside her office husband, Times columnist, writer and restaurant critic Giles Coren.
0:00:43 > 0:00:48And together, of course, they presented any number of very successful food programmes.
0:00:48 > 0:00:49Thank you for joining us.
0:00:49 > 0:00:52APPLAUSE
0:00:52 > 0:00:55Let's start with childhood pleasures.
0:00:55 > 0:00:58- Sue, did your parents read to you? - All the time, yeah,
0:00:58 > 0:01:00both my mum and my dad.
0:01:00 > 0:01:04My dad made up stories, which were mainly, now I look back, squirrel-based.
0:01:04 > 0:01:07- Sam the Squirrel. - And you were in Croydon,
0:01:07 > 0:01:09so they were Croydon-based squirrel-based?
0:01:09 > 0:01:13Yes. They were very specific Croydon squirrel anecdotes.
0:01:13 > 0:01:18The squirrel would basically have these adventures, and I remember
0:01:18 > 0:01:21being quite a sickly child, I had whooping cough and mumps,
0:01:21 > 0:01:28and I was pinned down to my bed with my dad, as I say, essentially rodent-orientated story telling.
0:01:28 > 0:01:30And your mother, a working mother?
0:01:30 > 0:01:32No, stay-at-home mum.
0:01:32 > 0:01:39She just sat with me and thought, "I'm going to make this child love books", and she did.
0:01:39 > 0:01:42- Giles, did your father read to you as a child?- He did,
0:01:42 > 0:01:46bits and pieces. He read a book called Theodore And The Talking Mushroom,
0:01:46 > 0:01:49about a mushroom that could talk but could only say "querp".
0:01:49 > 0:01:54One day Theodore comes to a valley and there's thousands of talking mushrooms, all going "Querp, querp".
0:01:54 > 0:01:57And I'd make him do a different voice for every querp.
0:01:57 > 0:01:59So he got bored with that quite early.
0:01:59 > 0:02:03So your dad was mushroom-based and mine was squirrel-based.
0:02:03 > 0:02:07We ought to remind everyone who your dad was, which was Alan Coren,
0:02:07 > 0:02:10the very famous Times columnist and editor of Punch,
0:02:10 > 0:02:13and of course one of the team captains on Call My Bluff,
0:02:13 > 0:02:17- a very competitive team captain on Call My Bluff. - He was... Oh, there he is.
0:02:17 > 0:02:21He was very competitive, it's 0-0 at that stage so he can still smile.
0:02:21 > 0:02:24Just remind you of another picture of you.
0:02:26 > 0:02:28Very pretty baby, Giles.
0:02:28 > 0:02:31Yeah, I think it's probably swapped.
0:02:31 > 0:02:33Sue, what's your first choice?
0:02:33 > 0:02:36My choice is a book that was published the year I was born -
0:02:36 > 0:02:37The Very Hungry Caterpillar.
0:02:37 > 0:02:39I love this book.
0:02:39 > 0:02:42I read this to my grandson, who's two.
0:02:42 > 0:02:45I remember both my parents reading it to me and what I loved about it,
0:02:45 > 0:02:49was the fact that, you're learning about the life cycle of an animal,
0:02:49 > 0:02:52you're learning new words, you've got these incredible pictures,
0:02:52 > 0:02:54you can stick your hands into the hole,
0:02:54 > 0:02:57and it's like a meditation on binge-eating as well.
0:02:57 > 0:03:00It sort of shows you, you can go so long just eating veg.
0:03:00 > 0:03:02You can hold up the holes so people can see.
0:03:02 > 0:03:07It's fabulous. He starts with an apple, then a couple of pears, and then he moves on
0:03:07 > 0:03:10and it's all very "five a day" and healthy
0:03:10 > 0:03:14and he works his way through, and what a lot of fibre he's got in his system.
0:03:14 > 0:03:18- He's going to have digestion issues there. - But then he just goes nuts.
0:03:18 > 0:03:19We've got a clip, will that help?
0:03:21 > 0:03:24The next day was Sunday again.
0:03:24 > 0:03:29The caterpillar ate through one nice green leaf
0:03:29 > 0:03:33and after that he felt much better.
0:03:33 > 0:03:38Now he wasn't hungry any more, and he wasn't a little caterpillar any more.
0:03:38 > 0:03:41He was a big, fat caterpillar.
0:03:42 > 0:03:46- How old were you when you read it? - Probably...- 27.- Three, four.
0:03:46 > 0:03:49I know, I'm still reading it now, but, you know...
0:03:49 > 0:03:51- Sue's degree was The Hungry Caterpillar.- He was...
0:03:51 > 0:03:55Easy now, we'll come to you. He was inspired by a hole puncher.
0:03:55 > 0:03:57That's what inspired him to write the book.
0:03:57 > 0:04:00Suddenly, you're interfacing with literature in a very different way,
0:04:00 > 0:04:02it's suddenly a tactile thing.
0:04:02 > 0:04:05But, what I love as well is that, you know, this book tells you
0:04:05 > 0:04:10you can eat a chocolate cake, an ice cream cone, a pickle, a slice of Swiss cheese, salami, a lollipop,
0:04:10 > 0:04:16cherry pie, one sausage, a cupcake, a slice of watermelon and you can still turn out to be a butterfly.
0:04:16 > 0:04:20He's saying if you eat a portion the size of a punched hole, you can,
0:04:20 > 0:04:22so it's a bit of a Rosemary Conley, isn't it?
0:04:22 > 0:04:24We're going to move on.
0:04:24 > 0:04:29We will actually come back to childhood books, but we'll fast forward, Giles, for your first book.
0:04:29 > 0:04:30You were at boarding school?
0:04:30 > 0:04:33I've lived Sue's early childhood and now gone to boarding school!
0:04:33 > 0:04:37Did you mind being bundled off to school?
0:04:37 > 0:04:39I don't really remember.
0:04:39 > 0:04:41I mean, I was allowed home at weekends.
0:04:41 > 0:04:44- Let's tell everybody about the book. - The Great Gatsby was...
0:04:44 > 0:04:48Both my parents were quite sort of formative in a book sense,
0:04:48 > 0:04:50but my dad was a writer and a big, big reader
0:04:50 > 0:04:52and it was his favourite book.
0:04:52 > 0:04:56He spent a lot of time in America, he was very into American writers,
0:04:56 > 0:04:59and I wanted to read it because it was his favourite book,
0:04:59 > 0:05:01but he always said I shouldn't read it until I'd fallen in love.
0:05:01 > 0:05:03And as I was boarding
0:05:03 > 0:05:06and single sex education, it was either not take his advice
0:05:06 > 0:05:08or wait until I had fallen in love with a boy.
0:05:08 > 0:05:10This was his favourite book.
0:05:10 > 0:05:15The Great Gatsby is J Gatsby, a billionaire who's got his money from nobody quite knows where.
0:05:15 > 0:05:20It's narrated by one of his neighbours, so nosey neighbour Nick Carraway, who goes to...
0:05:20 > 0:05:24He sees all these dazzling parties happening and wonders why.
0:05:24 > 0:05:27One night he gets invited to one of them, and it turns out that
0:05:27 > 0:05:32Gatsby's throwing these parties in the desperate hope that a girl he loved years ago before the war
0:05:32 > 0:05:36- will one day walk into one of the parties. - Do you read from a very old copy?
0:05:36 > 0:05:38Have you re-read it?
0:05:38 > 0:05:41I've read it hundreds of times. I've got lots of copies, I've got my dad's copy.
0:05:41 > 0:05:44After he died, at his memorial service,
0:05:44 > 0:05:47when I was asked to do a reading, we did it at St Bride's Church
0:05:47 > 0:05:51and there was plenty of bible stuff and whatnot, and then I thought, you know,
0:05:51 > 0:05:53I'd read from The Great Gatsby, so I read from his copy,
0:05:53 > 0:05:57a sort of sad bit at the end which had always made me sort of choke.
0:05:57 > 0:05:59And when he was dying, I'd go back and read this page, thinking,
0:05:59 > 0:06:02"I'll read this when he's dead, this'll be really moving."
0:06:02 > 0:06:04I would choke every time.
0:06:04 > 0:06:08Then when it came to it, I was so nervous at having this enormous audience
0:06:08 > 0:06:12that I just sort of bundled through it and it was fine. But it seemed to be good closure.
0:06:12 > 0:06:16The end of the book is one of the saddest pieces of literature you can ever read.
0:06:16 > 0:06:19So this, after Gatsby's died, it's very near the end,
0:06:19 > 0:06:23Nick Carraway's sort of, you know, planning to move back east...
0:06:23 > 0:06:24and move back west.
0:06:24 > 0:06:28So he's standing on his lawn looking out and says,
0:06:28 > 0:06:33"I spent my Saturday nights in New York, because those gleaming, dazzling parties of his
0:06:33 > 0:06:37"were with me so vividly that I could still hear the music and the laughter
0:06:37 > 0:06:41"faint and incessant from his garden, and the cars going up and down his drive.
0:06:41 > 0:06:43"One night, I did hear a material car there
0:06:43 > 0:06:46"and saw its lights stop at his front steps, but I didn't investigate.
0:06:46 > 0:06:49"Probably it was some final guest
0:06:49 > 0:06:52"who'd been away at the ends of the Earth and didn't know
0:06:52 > 0:06:54that the party was over."
0:06:54 > 0:06:56You can tell it doesn't end well.
0:06:56 > 0:06:59Sue, your next book's a sort of coming of age book, isn't it?
0:06:59 > 0:07:01- Yes.- How old were you?
0:07:01 > 0:07:08I was about 16 when I read this book and it remains my favourite to this day.
0:07:08 > 0:07:13And it's the heavyweight, Russian - Dostoevsky -
0:07:13 > 0:07:16and it's his masterwork, I think, Crime And Punishment,
0:07:16 > 0:07:18which is now, I think, is a byword for pretension.
0:07:18 > 0:07:23And I think pretension was possibly the reason that I was driven to pick it up in the first place.
0:07:23 > 0:07:28I mean, how did you feel in Croydon walking round with this, did it go down well?
0:07:28 > 0:07:30I kept in the inside of my... I was a Goth,
0:07:30 > 0:07:34so the great thing about Goths is they've got huge, long coats,
0:07:34 > 0:07:37and you can hide any amount of Russian literature in any of the pockets.
0:07:37 > 0:07:41- Raskolnikov's basically a Goth, isn't he?- Yeah, he's morbid and...
0:07:41 > 0:07:47Just before we go into who was a Goth in it, ten seconds you've got to give us the plot.
0:07:47 > 0:07:51OK. Raskolnikov is a depressed student who is in debt
0:07:51 > 0:07:55and decides to murder his landlady who's a pawnbroker,
0:07:55 > 0:08:00wealthy pawnbroker, and believes that in doing this terrible act,
0:08:00 > 0:08:04it will be worthwhile, because the good that will come
0:08:04 > 0:08:05of the money he's got
0:08:05 > 0:08:09and the way he disperses it amongst the poor will justify, so the means will justify the end.
0:08:09 > 0:08:14And strangely, you know, you're persuaded to love this murderer, aren't you?
0:08:14 > 0:08:16Yes, it's... The first book I came across.
0:08:16 > 0:08:22Bearing in mind, you know, I loved reading as a kid, but, when you study books,
0:08:22 > 0:08:25at least when we were growing up, it's Jane Austen all the way.
0:08:25 > 0:08:28It's Hampshire parkland, it's prim women, who have consumption
0:08:28 > 0:08:31and fall over and faint and are incredibly passive.
0:08:31 > 0:08:35And, there's no real high drama, and there's certainly no psychological intensity.
0:08:35 > 0:08:37The women in this one get killed with axes.
0:08:37 > 0:08:40Yeah, it's either get killed with an axe or be a prostitute.
0:08:40 > 0:08:45But it's dark and it's brooding and there's no skipping and there's no happy ever after,
0:08:45 > 0:08:48and I think sometimes when you're exploring the world,
0:08:48 > 0:08:52you need to find books like these that sort of describe
0:08:52 > 0:08:55the human condition the way that it sometimes is, as bleak and pitiless.
0:08:55 > 0:08:59- Just read a little from it. - This is an extract which
0:08:59 > 0:09:02gives a snapshot, a sort of thumbnail of Raskolnikov,
0:09:02 > 0:09:07the central character, who's a rather mercurial and manic depressive figure.
0:09:07 > 0:09:08"What can I tell you?
0:09:08 > 0:09:10"I've know him for a year and a half.
0:09:10 > 0:09:16"Sullen, gloomy, arrogant, proud, recently and maybe much earlier,
0:09:16 > 0:09:19"insecure and hypochondriac. Magnanimous and kind.
0:09:19 > 0:09:25"Doesn't like voicing his feelings and would rather do something cruel than speak his heart out in words.
0:09:25 > 0:09:30"At times, however, he's not hypochondriac at all but just inhumanly cold and callous,
0:09:30 > 0:09:34"as if there really were two opposite characters in him changing places with one another.
0:09:34 > 0:09:40"At times he's terribly taciturn, always in a hurry, always too busy, yet he lies there doing nothing.
0:09:40 > 0:09:43"Not given to mockery and not because he lacks sharpness,
0:09:43 > 0:09:46"but as if he had no time for such trifles.
0:09:46 > 0:09:48"Never hears people out to the end.
0:09:48 > 0:09:51"Never interested in what interests everyone else at a given moment,
0:09:51 > 0:09:56"sets a terribly high value on himself, and it seems, not without a certain justification."
0:09:56 > 0:09:58Thank you, Sue, I think you've sold it
0:09:58 > 0:10:01We're going to go from the gloomy urban setting of St Petersburg
0:10:01 > 0:10:05to the 1930s for Giles' next choice.
0:10:05 > 0:10:09It's very English, the author, Laurie Lee.
0:10:09 > 0:10:12Yeah. You know, Cider With Rosie is his most popular thing.
0:10:12 > 0:10:15But you haven't chosen that. Let's tell everybody -
0:10:15 > 0:10:17As I Walked Out One Midsummer Morning.
0:10:17 > 0:10:20In fact, it's not a book about the English countryside is it?
0:10:20 > 0:10:24He walks out of the English countryside where he grew up,
0:10:24 > 0:10:27in the Cotswolds, and walks to London and then on to Spain.
0:10:27 > 0:10:32Just sets off with a violin, as it happens, in the year before the Spanish Civil War was breaking out,
0:10:32 > 0:10:37and he's a 19-year-old poet seeking his destiny and having fun with gypsy girls.
0:10:37 > 0:10:42And from the title onwards, it's obviously lyrical and uplifting and full of hope, isn't it?
0:10:42 > 0:10:46Yes. I mean, it is but it's full of hope but it's also,
0:10:46 > 0:10:49has a very elegiac tone so, so his previous book was all about,
0:10:49 > 0:10:53oh, the England that we have lost, this is also about Spain and Europe
0:10:53 > 0:10:56and how it all was just before everything went wrong.
0:10:56 > 0:11:00- Did you follow his footsteps? - I can't bear travelling. I thought I would.
0:11:00 > 0:11:04I'm capable of going on holiday, but I'm not capable of just setting off
0:11:04 > 0:11:07and seeing what'll happen, because in my experience it's usually nothing.
0:11:07 > 0:11:11That is the odd thing, isn't it, that this is a book that you really love?
0:11:11 > 0:11:15I know, I thought I'd travel. I was 15, I read this book, I thought, "When I'm his age,
0:11:15 > 0:11:18"I will set off barefoot across the Pyrenees with my violin" -
0:11:18 > 0:11:21- nobody wants to hear me play the violin.- OK, read us a bit.
0:11:21 > 0:11:24It just sort of... Listen to him, he says,
0:11:24 > 0:11:29"It was 1934, I was 19 years old, still soft at the edges but with a confident belief in good fortune.
0:11:29 > 0:11:32"I carried a small rolled-up tent, a violin in a blanket,
0:11:32 > 0:11:36"a change of clothes, a tin of treacle biscuits and some cheese.
0:11:36 > 0:11:40"I was excited, vainglorious, knowing I had far to go, but not as yet how far.
0:11:40 > 0:11:43"As I left home that morning, and walked away from the sleeping village,
0:11:43 > 0:11:46"it never occurred to me that others had done this before me."
0:11:46 > 0:11:47Whereas, it occurred to me,
0:11:47 > 0:11:50"Everyone's done that, I'll just stay home and watch telly."
0:11:50 > 0:11:54That's what I was going to say, because we have got here your book,
0:11:54 > 0:11:57this is Giles' book, Anger Management. This is,
0:11:57 > 0:12:00"I've travelled all over the world and have learnt
0:12:00 > 0:12:02"only that I hate people who travel most of all.
0:12:02 > 0:12:07"With their cameras and their bum bags and their maps and their smattering of the lingo
0:12:07 > 0:12:10"and their cultural sensitivity and their Rough Guides
0:12:10 > 0:12:11"and even rougher girlfriends.
0:12:11 > 0:12:17"You go to their houses, they have carpets on the wall, carpets on the wall, I tell you,
0:12:17 > 0:12:21"because they have bought so many bloody carpets that there is no room for them on the floor any more."
0:12:21 > 0:12:24Well, exactly, yes.
0:12:24 > 0:12:29I turned my incredibly miserable, boring, unadventurous childhood into a book that sold about seven copies.
0:12:29 > 0:12:33It's quite a, you know, really excellent, excellent pay-off, I thought.
0:12:33 > 0:12:35We'll move on to you being at Cambridge.
0:12:35 > 0:12:38Doing a very traditional course, English.
0:12:38 > 0:12:44Were you excited to move from Croydon-based to Cambridge-based?
0:12:44 > 0:12:47It was very frightening, my first week, actually. It's...
0:12:47 > 0:12:50You can't underestimate how much architecture informs you,
0:12:50 > 0:12:54and I'd grown up amongst concrete and didn't see grass until I moved to Cambridge,
0:12:54 > 0:12:58and suddenly there were the Dreaming Spires and beautiful 15th century buildings
0:12:58 > 0:13:00and it was profoundly shocking.
0:13:00 > 0:13:03And I felt very dislocated for some time, actually.
0:13:03 > 0:13:08I felt grungy and urban, so there was a slight culture clash but one that was probably quite fertile,
0:13:08 > 0:13:11looking back, and I did really love my time there.
0:13:11 > 0:13:16- Were you disappointed in the books on your course?- Yeah,
0:13:16 > 0:13:18it was a very traditional course at Cambridge.
0:13:18 > 0:13:22It didn't really recognise anything published after about 1928,
0:13:22 > 0:13:26so if you wanted to study Rushdie, or Amis or McEwan,
0:13:26 > 0:13:29there was no-one to really supervise that study, so,
0:13:29 > 0:13:31it was very, very traditional.
0:13:31 > 0:13:35There was a lot of Anglo Saxon and Norse and Celtic and it's amazing,
0:13:35 > 0:13:39you speak Norse to people in the supermarkets, they've no idea what you're talking about(!)
0:13:39 > 0:13:41- Out of it came your next choice? - It did.
0:13:41 > 0:13:44Very different to anything you were being taught at the time -
0:13:44 > 0:13:46Nights At The Circus, Angela Carter.
0:13:46 > 0:13:50Angela Carter, I think, is explosive and it's sexy
0:13:50 > 0:13:54and it's magic realism at its best. It's fairytale, it's post-feminism,
0:13:54 > 0:14:00it's so incalculably rich and extraordinary to get hold of.
0:14:00 > 0:14:03- Tell us about the heroine.- Fevvers.
0:14:03 > 0:14:09So Fevvers was born, the mythology of Fevvers is that she's hatched from an egg, and she's an odd child
0:14:09 > 0:14:13with sort of lumps here, sort of a bit like a double hunchback,
0:14:13 > 0:14:17and as she hits adolescence, suddenly these lumps turn into
0:14:17 > 0:14:23these incredible wings, so immediately she's, she's an oddity, and the story...
0:14:23 > 0:14:25A bit like The Hungry Caterpillar, then.
0:14:25 > 0:14:27Yes, all about metamorphosis.
0:14:27 > 0:14:30You could find her slightly annoying, the heroine of this, Sue.
0:14:30 > 0:14:33Yeah. She's brash and she's not an apologist.
0:14:33 > 0:14:37- I don't know if there's something about that you might recognise. - Or you! She's...
0:14:37 > 0:14:41Girls, girls, girls, come on, let's just talk about the books.
0:14:41 > 0:14:43- She's an exhibitionist. - She is an exhibitionist.
0:14:43 > 0:14:48- Unashamedly.- Totally, and there is something irritating about that personality that goes,
0:14:48 > 0:14:50"Look at me, look at me, I can fly."
0:14:50 > 0:14:54And the focus and the energy is always on her, but...
0:14:54 > 0:14:57- Can she actually fly?- Well, this runs through the book.
0:14:57 > 0:14:59It's not that I haven't read it, but...
0:14:59 > 0:15:02- She has a very big account of herself, doesn't she?- Totally,
0:15:02 > 0:15:06totally a big account of herself, but that's how she lures her menfolk in.
0:15:06 > 0:15:09As Giles hasn't read any of this, shall we give him a taste?
0:15:09 > 0:15:10Why not?
0:15:14 > 0:15:20"She rose up on tiptoe and slowly twirled around giving the spectators a comprehensive view of her back.
0:15:20 > 0:15:22"Seeing is believing.
0:15:22 > 0:15:26"Then she spread out her superb heavy arms in a backwards gesture of benediction,
0:15:26 > 0:15:29"and as she did so, her wings spread too.
0:15:29 > 0:15:36"Polychromatic unfolding fully six feet across, spread of an eagle, a condor, an albatross fed to excess
0:15:36 > 0:15:38"on the same diet that makes flamingos pink."
0:15:38 > 0:15:43It's about somebody who is constantly in the process of
0:15:43 > 0:15:47fictionalising their life and, you know, every moment she's changeable.
0:15:47 > 0:15:50And, you know, if you want to get political about it,
0:15:50 > 0:15:55it's an allegory on why women can only shine in certain environments and if they're unusual,
0:15:55 > 0:15:58how they're almost put in cages or they have to have labels put on them
0:15:58 > 0:16:00or they're freaks of nature.
0:16:00 > 0:16:02And I think she was writing at a time in the '80s where
0:16:02 > 0:16:06of course you can't discount that kind of feminist strand,
0:16:06 > 0:16:09but ANY book is boring if you see it as a feminist book.
0:16:09 > 0:16:11This is a great book because it's bouncing with life,
0:16:11 > 0:16:14it's got incredible imagery and she's an extraordinary writer.
0:16:14 > 0:16:16Because you felt so different at Cambridge,
0:16:16 > 0:16:20- it was...- I think there's an element of that and of course there's...
0:16:20 > 0:16:26you know, my personality is, very, very customary for a sort of personality on television -
0:16:26 > 0:16:31there's one half of me that's unspeakably shy and can't look at people and stammers and is fretful,
0:16:31 > 0:16:35and there's the other part that is the most appalling narcissistic show-off,
0:16:35 > 0:16:40and it's reconciling those two, and that's what this book explores.
0:16:40 > 0:16:43It's how you're one thing in public and another in private.
0:16:43 > 0:16:47So, while you were at Cambridge, you're at Oxford.
0:16:47 > 0:16:50I was a nerdy little swot with no notion of self definition.
0:16:50 > 0:16:52You read this just after you left -
0:16:52 > 0:16:54Moby Dick, Herman Melville.
0:16:54 > 0:16:57I know, it's the saddest thing, the day after finals,
0:16:57 > 0:17:00after three years of really working reasonably hard,
0:17:00 > 0:17:05and everyone sort of went crazy, I started reading books that hadn't been on the course.
0:17:05 > 0:17:08The Americans go on and on about trying to write the great American novel -
0:17:08 > 0:17:12in fact they did it 150 years ago, better than anything ever written in English,
0:17:12 > 0:17:16- any Dickens rubbish or Thackeray. - Will you give us a thumbnail sketch?
0:17:16 > 0:17:19A bloke goes out to catch a fish and nearly manages it and fails.
0:17:19 > 0:17:21It's only 800 pages, so...
0:17:21 > 0:17:25- It's basically Jaws, essentially. - Yes, exactly.- It's Jaws.- It's Jaws.
0:17:25 > 0:17:28Maybe the clip will help.
0:17:28 > 0:17:30The birds!
0:17:30 > 0:17:32He rises!
0:17:37 > 0:17:38In!
0:17:38 > 0:17:40In and after him!
0:17:48 > 0:17:50HE SCREAMS
0:17:55 > 0:17:58I think they've got slightly better at doing whales since then.
0:17:58 > 0:18:00Yes. I think they probably have.
0:18:00 > 0:18:03I mean, funnily enough, that is the only thing that happens in the book.
0:18:03 > 0:18:06I'm sort of suspicious of plots and find plots boring,
0:18:06 > 0:18:08I like books when nothing much happens,
0:18:08 > 0:18:12and really, the whole book is build up to that moment.
0:18:12 > 0:18:14Your next book choices are more contemporary,
0:18:14 > 0:18:19Sue, appropriately, yours is called The Queen Of Whale Cay,
0:18:19 > 0:18:21though it's nothing to do with whales.
0:18:21 > 0:18:23It's not a very well-known book.
0:18:23 > 0:18:25Can you give us a brief description?
0:18:25 > 0:18:30Basically, Queen Of Whale Cay is a woman called Jo Carstairs, the fastest woman on water.
0:18:30 > 0:18:33And she's basically a playboy, except she's female.
0:18:33 > 0:18:36She's loaded... to the point of madness.
0:18:36 > 0:18:39She buys and island, she runs it as her own fiefdom.
0:18:39 > 0:18:42She looks like most people who taught me Latin at school, actually.
0:18:42 > 0:18:43The thing is,
0:18:43 > 0:18:46people were very, as you would be, when you first met her,
0:18:46 > 0:18:50because she was so rumbustuous and strong and would trek across
0:18:50 > 0:18:53mango groves and then sort of throttle an animal
0:18:53 > 0:18:56and then have a bite on a sandwich and throttle something else.
0:18:56 > 0:19:01But actually, everyone slowly came to really love her and...so eccentric.
0:19:01 > 0:19:07- She had a puppet that she spoke to and communicated with. - She slept with Marlene Dietrich.
0:19:07 > 0:19:11She did, and apparently Dietrich was so in love with her, it broke her heart.
0:19:11 > 0:19:15She's like Ernest Hemingway, she's like a female Hemingway.
0:19:15 > 0:19:20But you never get to hear about these people, I think that's why I love this book so much,
0:19:20 > 0:19:26because it's these characters from the margins, and Kate Summerscale is a fantastic writer.
0:19:26 > 0:19:30- It would make a great movie.- Yeah, you've read this, did you like it?
0:19:30 > 0:19:33Yeah, I think it's terrific, I was very glad to be introduced to it.
0:19:33 > 0:19:36It's a real gift to be given something like that,
0:19:36 > 0:19:40because you'd never think of buying it, but when you read it... You talk about Gatsby,
0:19:40 > 0:19:44I mean, the same sort of time period and this just basically swings
0:19:44 > 0:19:48the microscope of history round and gives you an alternate story, and it's fascinating.
0:19:48 > 0:19:50Giles, your next choice,
0:19:50 > 0:19:52- Everything Is Illuminated.- Yes.
0:19:52 > 0:19:55By Jonathan Safran Foer, who's a young American writer,
0:19:55 > 0:19:58much younger than me, even younger than that when he published that
0:19:58 > 0:20:02- and younger still when he wrote it, he was 19 or 20.- And you feature,
0:20:02 > 0:20:06or your words feature on the cover, "A work of genius, a new kind of novel,
0:20:06 > 0:20:10"after it things will never be the same again, it will blow you away."
0:20:10 > 0:20:14And they haven't actually put my name there because people wouldn't
0:20:14 > 0:20:18think it was true if it had my name after it, so they've just put The Times.
0:20:18 > 0:20:23I had never heard of him, no-one had heard of him in this country. He hadn't been published here.
0:20:23 > 0:20:25He'd published the odd short story in New York.
0:20:25 > 0:20:28My publisher, when I was writing my own first novel, my publisher said,
0:20:28 > 0:20:32"You might like this, by this young American kid", sent it to me cold,
0:20:32 > 0:20:36I read it and I was halfway through my novel, and I realised it was
0:20:36 > 0:20:40- just the novel I wish I could write. - Did it put you off?- Yeah,
0:20:40 > 0:20:44I was writing a pale imitation of that book, even before I'd read it.
0:20:44 > 0:20:50- Tell us about it.- I think at the time he was, he was on a creative writing course,
0:20:50 > 0:20:53having graduated from whatever university it was,
0:20:53 > 0:20:57and he wanted to do, he wanted to go back and investigate his family -
0:20:57 > 0:21:04he was a Jewish emigre - and investigate what had happened to his grandparents in the Ukraine
0:21:04 > 0:21:06in the years leading up to the Holocaust.
0:21:06 > 0:21:09And so he went back to try and find the shtetl
0:21:09 > 0:21:13where they'd come from, and things didn't go very well.
0:21:13 > 0:21:17So he ended up sort of blowing up the project and turning it into a novel.
0:21:17 > 0:21:20Did it encourage you to look at your Jewish ancestry?
0:21:20 > 0:21:24Yes. It did, or it made me, I was doing that when I was writing my novel.
0:21:24 > 0:21:28I wanted to write about... Because the people who were around then,
0:21:28 > 0:21:32people who were victims of persecution, that kind of literature all exists.
0:21:32 > 0:21:36Then there was the second generation, the children of the Holocaust survivors,
0:21:36 > 0:21:39but then there's the children of the children - he was someone
0:21:39 > 0:21:43whose grandparents' generation, like mine, were affected by it.
0:21:43 > 0:21:45And I tried, and I wrote this book which was fine,
0:21:45 > 0:21:48it's just this kid was doing it so much better.
0:21:48 > 0:21:51You can't JUST write about Jewishness and the Holocaust and the war,
0:21:51 > 0:21:54you have to do it really, really well.
0:21:54 > 0:21:56- Were you proud about that... - Quote on the jacket?
0:21:56 > 0:21:59Yeah, I mean, when I started off in journalism, I wrote book reviews,
0:21:59 > 0:22:04that's what I did in the early '90s. You write book reviews with the sole aim of getting on the jacket.
0:22:04 > 0:22:08Whether you read the book or not, it doesn't matter how good the piece is,
0:22:08 > 0:22:13you write in sentences, you know, "A rare example of lyrical beauty in modern English fiction."
0:22:13 > 0:22:17Or you say, "By turns, harrowing and laugh out loud funny, it kept me..."
0:22:17 > 0:22:22- Always, "It kept me awake all night, or "Made me laugh out loud on the tube."- Let me stop you.
0:22:22 > 0:22:25Sue, will you read another bit from Anger Management by Giles Coren?
0:22:25 > 0:22:27- By Giles Coren?- Yeah.
0:22:27 > 0:22:30Where on Earth did you find a copy? It's amazing!
0:22:30 > 0:22:35- This is on book reviews on the back of...- Yes.
0:22:35 > 0:22:40- ..jackets of books.- From a chapter entitled People Who Think They Have A Book In Them.
0:22:40 > 0:22:44"Think of when you're looking at the back of a book wondering whether to buy it or not.
0:22:44 > 0:22:48"Those little recommendations from Nick Hornby and Salman Rushdie and Kathy Lette.
0:22:48 > 0:22:51"They're always the same - 'A rattling good read.'
0:22:51 > 0:22:54"'I couldn't put it down.' 'It kept me awake till four in the morning.'"
0:22:54 > 0:23:00"What does it matter that a piece of creative writing kept Kathy Lette awake till four in the morning?
0:23:00 > 0:23:02- "A dodgy car alarm would do that." - LAUGHTER
0:23:02 > 0:23:08- So it's a complete contradiction. - You're saying I'm a hypocrite? Yes. Absolutely. Anything to get in print.
0:23:08 > 0:23:11Yeah, no, I mean it was, it is true, it is, you know,
0:23:11 > 0:23:15the book blurb is one of the great phantasms. You must get asked a bit,
0:23:15 > 0:23:18just to give someone a quote for the front of their book.
0:23:18 > 0:23:22And you get sent a book by someone who's maybe a friend and it's absolutely rubbish.
0:23:22 > 0:23:25Made me want to cry, laugh, urinate, explode, and then you...
0:23:25 > 0:23:29Exactly. My father, my dad was sent one by his friend Jeffrey Archer once,
0:23:29 > 0:23:34it was Jeffrey Archer's publisher, my dad and he were great mates always remained great mates.
0:23:34 > 0:23:37But Archer's writing wasn't up my dad's street.
0:23:37 > 0:23:42- So he gave him the quote, "Fans of Jeffrey Archer will not be disappointed."- Yeah.
0:23:42 > 0:23:47- LAUGHTER - It is a problem, isn't it? I always find, "A jaw-dropping account"
0:23:47 > 0:23:50- is a good description.- Very good. - We've had childhood books,
0:23:50 > 0:23:53ones you've enjoyed in adolescence,
0:23:53 > 0:23:56we're going to move on to guilty pleasures. Sue, what'll it be?
0:23:56 > 0:23:58Well, I've picked The Moonstone
0:23:58 > 0:24:01by Wilkie Collins simply because it acts as a turning point for me
0:24:01 > 0:24:03into the truly guilty pleasures.
0:24:03 > 0:24:06So The Moonstone is a very famous work of detective fiction.
0:24:06 > 0:24:11It features arguably the first detective we have in British writing
0:24:11 > 0:24:16and it's got all the sensationalist accoutrements you get in a great thriller.
0:24:16 > 0:24:20You've got the locked room, you've got the missing diamond,
0:24:20 > 0:24:23you've got the heiress, you've got the gentleman detective,
0:24:23 > 0:24:27you've got the procedural, slightly bumbling kind of Scotland Yard guy,
0:24:27 > 0:24:31you've got a group of Indian jugglers who may or may not be suspicious.
0:24:31 > 0:24:36They might just be jugglers, or, they could be sent by a slightly more sinister force.
0:24:36 > 0:24:40At what stage in your life did you realise that Wilkie Collins was a man?
0:24:40 > 0:24:46I think when I read the... "'Wilkie Collins is the finest man writing today,' Giles Coren."
0:24:46 > 0:24:49- I thought Wilkie Collins was a woman until about...- Did you?
0:24:49 > 0:24:53Until I was about 38, yeah, I didn't read it because I thought it was another chick...
0:24:53 > 0:24:57- It's not really a Christian name whichever way you slice it. - Not really, is it? Wilkie?- No.
0:24:57 > 0:25:00- So, crime.- So crime.- Light crime.
0:25:00 > 0:25:04And the thing is, is that, I mean, Wilkie will now turn in his grave,
0:25:04 > 0:25:09but Wilkie's directly responsible for Agatha Christie, who basically takes the locked room,
0:25:09 > 0:25:12takes all those kind of tropes of detective fiction and uses them
0:25:12 > 0:25:14- in every single book.- Meanwhile,
0:25:14 > 0:25:17for YOUR guilty pleasure, you go back to childhood?
0:25:17 > 0:25:20I've got these Asterix books here and I've read them all
0:25:20 > 0:25:22- hundreds of times. - They're comics.
0:25:22 > 0:25:25They're French. They're very much into their bandes dessinees.
0:25:25 > 0:25:27They don't have a literary heritage like ours,
0:25:27 > 0:25:32- they've got no Shakespeare, no Dickens...- Er, Hugo, Balzac, Zola.
0:25:32 > 0:25:36OK, yeah, but basically it's comics and restaurant menus, isn't it, for the French?
0:25:36 > 0:25:39- LAUGHTER - And, they have taken it to
0:25:39 > 0:25:43a very high level with Asterix, which are much better in translation
0:25:43 > 0:25:47- into English than they are in French.- They're quite Python-esque, aren't they?
0:25:47 > 0:25:50Yes, I mean, in that anachronism is the big joke, really.
0:25:50 > 0:25:55Sue's leafing here through some which I happen to have in Flemish because...
0:25:55 > 0:25:58Of course you do. Why do you have them in Flemish?
0:25:58 > 0:26:00They have actually been published in about 45 languages.
0:26:00 > 0:26:04- I've got them all. - They're phenomenally successful.
0:26:04 > 0:26:06I've got Asterix in...
0:26:06 > 0:26:10THEY READ OUT TITLES IN DIFFERENT LANGUAGES
0:26:14 > 0:26:17Everyone'll be changing channels.
0:26:17 > 0:26:21- These are boys' books, aren't they? - I'm hoping not. - They're not girls' books, are they?
0:26:21 > 0:26:26They're not girls'... I was more of a Tintin, Tintin was more girly.
0:26:26 > 0:26:29Tintin is basically your Queen Of Whale Cay, though - 1930s,
0:26:29 > 0:26:32racing around in sports cars and sort of plus fours...
0:26:32 > 0:26:34Plus dogs as well, which is always good.
0:26:34 > 0:26:38Sue, what do your book choices say about you, if you look at them?
0:26:38 > 0:26:40If I look at them I'd say... what do they say?
0:26:40 > 0:26:43Let me line them up and I can sort of go in...
0:26:43 > 0:26:46I think they probably say, binge eating,
0:26:46 > 0:26:50quasi depressive...show-off...
0:26:50 > 0:26:56who would love to own her own island - although I'm not a fan of cross dressing, personally -
0:26:56 > 0:26:59and what was the other one of mine?
0:26:59 > 0:27:04Will probably end up getting, you know, I don't know, bumped off by an American heiress.
0:27:04 > 0:27:05Giles, what do yours say?
0:27:05 > 0:27:09Pre-literate moron trying to pretend he's read Moby Dick.
0:27:09 > 0:27:10Fabulous.
0:27:10 > 0:27:16Before we go, if you had to choose just one book, what would it be, Sue?
0:27:16 > 0:27:19I'm torn, and this is, I don't know, I'm torn between
0:27:19 > 0:27:22Crime And Punishment and The Very Hungry Caterpillar.
0:27:22 > 0:27:28And this is the book that you're going to recommend, to Giles, to viewers, to the audience.
0:27:28 > 0:27:33- I'm going to assume that everybody has read.- Oh, goody! Oh, you're not going to choose that?
0:27:33 > 0:27:35You want me to, don't you?
0:27:35 > 0:27:37- I love it!- You want me to say
0:27:37 > 0:27:41the book I choose above all others... Well, because it got me to read and...
0:27:41 > 0:27:45- And that's most important. - But to keep you reading.- OK, right.
0:27:45 > 0:27:49- I'm hedging my bets. - So The Hungry Caterpillar and Crime And Punishment.
0:27:49 > 0:27:52Could you stick to one, Giles?
0:27:52 > 0:27:57- I'd love to be able to tell people to read Asterix... - HE SPEAKS IN FLEMISH
0:27:57 > 0:28:00..but I suspect that their Flemish isn't as strong as mine.
0:28:00 > 0:28:03So, so Moby Dick. I think Moby Dick gets a very bad reputation.
0:28:03 > 0:28:06People think of it as long and difficult, but it's long and easy,
0:28:06 > 0:28:10and I would like other people to read it because no-one ever believes
0:28:10 > 0:28:13that I have, because it's the book people pretend to have read,
0:28:13 > 0:28:15and they really should have done.
0:28:15 > 0:28:19Sue, Giles, thank you very much indeed. And just to remind everyone,
0:28:19 > 0:28:23more details on the book series on the website.
0:28:23 > 0:28:26Please join me again tomorrow, same time, same place
0:28:26 > 0:28:28for more stories of lives and books.
0:28:28 > 0:28:30APPLAUSE
0:28:45 > 0:28:48Subtitles by Red Bee Media Ltd