Episode 3 My Life in Books

APPLAUSE

Thank you.

And hello and welcome to My Life In Books,

a chance for our guests to talk about their favourite reads

and why they are important.

With me tonight, actress Anna Chancellor,

currently starring in the BBC hit drama The Hour,

but she'll always be unforgettable in Four Weddings And A Funeral,

where she had the satisfaction of punching Hugh Grant.

Alongside her, Nicky Haslam,

one of the original It Boys.

He is the country's most famous interior designer,

there's nothing he can't do with chintz.

Welcome to you both.

APPLAUSE

Nicky, you're famous for decorating other people's houses,

what about your own house when you were growing up?

Erm... It was a very pretty Queen Anne, well,

William and Mary house in, Buckinghamshire, sort of manor house.

And it had beautiful panelling.

It was the original home of the Chases, of Chase Manhattan Bank.

And they kept writing to ask if they could move it to America.

SHE LAUGHS

I remember my father luckily tearing up the letters,

I was so nervous he might sell it.

And Anna, meanwhile, where were you?

I was brought up in Somerset, on the edge of the Quantocks,

in a large, rectory-type house.

And there must have been a great many books cos your father dealt in books, didn't he?

My father dealt in books, but I didn't live with my dad for most of our upbringing.

-But whenever we went to see him, he lived in Kew.

-Yeah.

And you could hardly get through the front door,

or get into a bedroom or get into a lavatory cos there were books everywhere.

He'd obviously sort of forgotten to build shelves.

We've got a picture of you growing up here.

Oh, how old are we there?

Ha! Quite young!

You've still got the same jumper on.

LAUGHTER

And you were sent off to convent boarding school quite early.

Yes, I was sent off to boarding school at seven.

Actually, it's interesting, your first choice,

which certainly wasn't in the library at your convent boarding school.

-It's Bella, by Jilly Cooper.

-Jilly Cooper, yes.

-I chose that because so much literature was banned.

-Yeah.

And that made it such incredibly potent reading.

We were completely addicted to Mills & Boon and, to crown it all, Jilly Cooper.

So we sort of scored books off each other in the lavatories,

and in the dormitories.

And then, we'd be reading them. Lights out very early, seven o'clock, half past seven.

Then, we'd be reading them down our beds with our duvets and our torches.

And suddenly, you'd hear the rustle of the...of the nun's skirt,

and the rattle of her keys.

And she'd rip off your duvet and you'd be caught,

-and she'd get your Jilly Cooper and tear it up then and there.

-Oh!

-Which was like somebody taking your crack away from you.

-Yeah.

LAUGHTER

And this was the days of nuns still in all their gear.

They were in a proper habit.

We'd say, you can kiss a nun once, you can kiss a nun twice, but you mustn't get into the habit.

Yeah. That's very good.

Yes. That was our schoolgirl joke.

Can you give us an extract from Bella?

-And perhaps an extract, which shows why the nuns...

-Oh, yes!

..didn't like her much.

She was so good,

because she obviously understood the teenage fantastical mind

of a young girl.

And it went something like this,

"Bella sprayed on some scent,

"then sprayed more round the room,

"arranged her breasts to advantage in the white dress and,

"sitting down, began to brush her hair.

"There was a knock at the door.

"'Come in,' she said huskily in her best Tallulah Bankhead voice.

"As she turned, smiling, her mouth dropped in amazement.

"For the man lounging in the doorway was absurdly romantic-looking,

"with very pale delicate features,

"hollowed cheeks, dark burning eyes,

"and hair as black and shining as a raven's wing.

"He was thin and very elegant, and over his dinner jacket

"was slung a magnificent honey-coloured fur coat."

LAUGHTER

Isn't it strange he's wearing fur?

I bet you wore fur, didn't you?

Yes, I did when I was very young.

Meanwhile, Nicky, while Anna was at convent boarding school...

-I got polio when I was seven, and I was in bed for three years.

-Yeah.

In a cast and I couldn't move my arms because it was...the cast was like that.

You must have been one of the last cases, weren't you?

Because, very shortly afterwards...

They got a vaccine. It was just afterwards.

-Everyone went and got off a...

-Sugar lump, yeah.

-Sugar lump, and...

It was just before that.

Do you look back and think that it made a difference to your life,

the three years you were in bed?

Well, I loved every minute of it, must be said,

because I was so nicely spoiled and looked after.

And my mother used to bring all her friends,

and music, put on the record player and dance around the room.

My father's friends would come, and people would come and see me all the time.

-The servants would come every morning for a chat.

-Yes.

It was, it was wonderful.

And you were a big household.

We've got a picture of you here.

-Yeah, I had two elder brothers.

-Yeah.

And American elder sister - my mother was first married to an American.

And you are the tiny one at the back!

The tiny one at the back, yes.

And your mother, with a very grand name, Diamond.

She was called Diamond - she was born on the day of Queen Victoria's Diamond Jubilee,

and Queen Victoria was her godmother.

Good heavens.

You too could sort of match each other on this,

-because you are descended from the Earl of Winchilsea on one side.

-Yes.

-And Herbert Asquith on the other.

-Yes.

Although I think the Asquiths weren't very posh.

He sort of was elevated to poshness and then given a big title.

-I think they had quite humble origins.

-Yeah.

But...

Did you know... I know there's an age difference,

but did the families know each other?

Well, I heard about your family a lot, because Asquith was so famous.

Weren't they something to do with Reuters?

Yes, my grandfather was the managing director of Reuters.

I remembered sort of that in the back my mind, somehow.

But did you work for my father?

I worked... My first job ever was working for your father.

Why do you posh people all know each other?

LAUGHTER

And at Eton, you knew Anna's uncle.

-Uncle Alexander, yes.

-The gorgeous Alexander.

How were you at Eton?

-Pathetic.

-Really?

Well, no, not really.

I didn't have to do anything very strenuous,

cos of polio I could get out of most things.

How did you amuse yourself?

Well, luckily, they did realise I had quite good artistic talent.

They encouraged me to go to the art school, and to write.

-Yeah.

-So I spent my life doing nice things.

Did you decorate?

I decorated my room, rather embarr...

well, not embarrassing, but flamboyantly, perhaps, we should say.

So you were encouraged to be individuals?

Yeah, that was the great thing about Eton, it was encouragement of individuals.

And it still is, I think.

And your first book, tell us about that.

The first I remember changing my life was

The Autobiography Of Alice B Toklas,

by Gertrude Stein.

Gertrude Stein was an American writer, who moved... Huge American woman,

who moved to Paris in the, I suppose, 1890s,

and had a big...became very literally famous.

And her girlfriend was Alice B Toklas,

and they lived together for ever and ever and ever.

-And everyone passed through their doors.

-Everybody, yes. I mean...

-Picasso...

Yes. Hemingway,

Diaghilev, Balanchine.

-All the great, literally, art world of the world.

-Yeah.

Is that where you wanted to be somewhere like that?

Yet, I wanted, I think I wanted to be a scenic designer then.

I wanted to do costumes.

Hopeless!

Meanwhile, Anna, you were doing well at boarding school?

-Ah... Intellectually well?

-Yeah.

-No, terribly.

So did you leave as soon as you could?

-I left with two O-Levels.

-Yeah.

And I was like Princess Diana when somebody, when a child said to her,

"You've got an enormous head." And she said, "Don't worry, there's nothing in it."

LAUGHTER

She only had two O-Levels, like me. I had English and Religion.

-Yes.

-And then, what did you want to do?

-I wanted to be an actress.

So how did you go about it?

When I left the convent, I became an artist model.

-Yeah. A nude model?

-Yes.

-Yeah.

-I wasn't shy like that.

No.

And then, amazingly, I got into drama school.

-But then I had to leave, cos I got pregnant.

-OK.

So motherhood was a big change?

Motherhood was a shock.

Where were you?

-We were living in a basement flat in Shepherd's Bush.

-Yeah.

And I had... I found myself pregnant,

found myself excited by the idea of it,

and then found myself horrified and didn't know what...didn't know what to do.

It was all happening, there was nothing that...

There was no reversing the situation after a while.

I was a romantic.

And your next book, I suppose it's very much part of this time, isn't it?

It's The Continuum Concept,

by Jean Liedloff.

It's a story of a woman

who spent two years in South America

and her sense of motherhood

and how best to bring up a baby

was entirely different from Dr Spock or Gina Ford today.

That's right. And she felt,

after watching these Native American Indians looking after their children,

that they never put them down, that they were strapped to their bodies,

that they slept in the same bed, they breastfed on demand.

And one of the things I loved was that she said,

"You must lead your, your very busy life,

"you must go out and do everything that you normally do. You just have to do it with your baby."

And I think, for me, and I was 21,

and the idea...if you...it would have been,

my life would have been over if I'd had to be locked in a basement flat,

and bedtime at seven, and then you can't go anywhere.

So I did take her everywhere.

-And Poppy, who is now...

-24.

-Yes.

-Yes.

Does she remember those times?

She remembers them as being fun times.

And she used to... She used to shout,

"Mum, turn up the music, I can't sleep!"

LAUGHTER

When I was rereading The Continuum, she said you mustn't keep it quiet.

-That thing of people taking the doorbells out.

-And tiptoeing.

-No, no, that's all wrong.

-Yeah.

-How interesting.

I don't know what happens if you have five children.

-But for one, it worked.

-Yeah.

And Nicky, meanwhile,

after Eton, what did you want to do?

Well, I didn't really know.

I knew it was going to be something to do with art in some strange way.

But then I met David Bailey

and that sort of crystallised it,

and I wanted to be a photographer for a bit.

And we went to New York together.

It's the early '60s,

and probably the sort of time that people like you, an old Etonian,

suddenly were chumming up with East End...

Yes, that was, that was the...

How did that happen?

-Well, I met David through a mutual friend...

-There he is.

-Yes, it was fun chumming up with that world, it was a revelation.

-Yeah.

And it was all I wanted to be.

I didn't want to see any of the Etonians.

I didn't want that world at all.

I just wanted this new thrusting world of...

sort of the young, for want of a better word, mods.

And going off to America,

-the film just recently out.

-Yeah.

-Which is about David Bailey and Jean Shrimpton.

-Yeah.

-And you.

And I was there, yes. And I stayed in America,

cos the fashion editor, Clare Rendelsham,

arranged for me to have an interview with the head of Vogue.

-Did it open up a new world for you?

-Yes, it did.

And especially because I'd met this extraordinary person called Jean Howard,

who had been a movie star but was married to the great agent Charlie Feldman.

And I met her, and we had a terrific bond.

And she introduced me to people like Cole Porter and...

Of course(!)

Lots of extraordinary movie stars. I mean, Dietrich, Garbo.

I met them all through Jean, it was extraordinary.

And did that include Washington as well. Did you meet Kennedy and...

-Yes.

-..Jackie Onassis?

Because the ambassador, which then was David Harlock,

and Jane, his daughter, was my great friend.

Of course(!)

LAUGHTER

And I went to stay at the embassy the first time I was there.

And you've chosen this wonderful photographic book,

Jean Howards's Hollywood: A Photo Memoir

And it's her photographs.

Well, besides being the sort of THE hostess of Hollywood,

and she ran, she really ran Hollywood, she knew everybody,

-she was on the side taking these extraordinary photographs.

-Yeah.

And they just are completely wonderful.

They are not posed photographs at all.

And they are of everybody of any interest, really,

it was not just Hollywood,

over the first part of the 20th century.

Nicky, do you think that photographs, as a decorator,

do you think they are something that should be on show or do you prefer art?

Photographs, I think photographs can be wonderful, properly done.

-I'm not sure about them littering a room.

-Yeah.

What do you mean by littering a room?

Well, all over the place, little sort of photographs framed on every surface.

Where are we meant to put those?

Well, as I said, they're fine if they are royal and on the piano.

-OK.

-Oh, do you think?

I don't know about on the piano.

-How do you open your piano then?

-Don't.

LAUGHTER

Nicky, you went to New York with David Bailey,

a completely new life.

We've got a photograph.

There you are, you look like James Dean there.

I think people tried to look like me, Anne.

-Ah, OK.

-I think so.

LAUGHTER

Where are you there?

I'm in my apartment in New York, on 77th Street.

And did you go on to Los Angeles and Hollywood?

No, I went to Hollywood to stay with Jean while I lived in New York,

and then I went to a ranch, I bought a ranch in Arizona

-and bred horses and became a cowboy.

-Yeah.

We've got you looking very sexy here.

Ha-ha-ha!

I... You see, everything, a Harley Davidson. A chopper...

-Yeah. In Arizona?

-In Arizona, yeah.

-I mean the only point of life is having a motorbike and wearing Levi's, isn't it?

-Indeed.

LAUGHTER

Anna, you were, you know, working your way as an actress.

But of course we ALL got to know you

in Four Weddings And A Funeral

and that very sad moment when you're about to get married

except you don't.

-This is awful, isn't it?

-Yes.

Duckface is betrayed.

LAUGHTER

Did you know, when the film came out, how special it was going to be?

No, I didn't think at all.

-Although, for me, it was fantastic being in the film.

-Yeah.

So it was all an enormous bonus for me.

I remember being on the bus having breakfast with Rowan Atkinson,

and I don't think Hugh was on the breakfast bus, actually. But...

-What, was he too grand for the breakfast bus?

-I think so.

THEY LAUGH

Was Andie MacDowell on the breakfast bus?

He was always complaining, "This is a nightmare. Nobody will believe it.

"I've got a friend who's gay, a brother who's deaf.

"Nobody is going to think..." He was always moaning.

LAUGHTER

"Do think anyone will laugh? I don't think so."

How early did you know you were going to be Duckface?

I didn't know I was going to be Duckface. It was a shock.

I didn't quite realise that that's what I was going to be known for

for the rest of my life.

LAUGHTER

-And in many different languages.

-Yes, in every language.

In Hungarian it's horse cheek.

LAUGHTER

But it's much, much worse in Italian.

I was filming with Colin Firth,

who is famously married to a beautiful Italian.

And he learnt Italian in about a week in order to get off with her.

-Yeah.

-God, she is beautiful too.

-She is beautiful.

-Yeah.

Well, he couldn't wait to tell me

-that in Italian it's faccia di culo.

-Yeah.

-Which apparently is arse face.

-Yeah.

LAUGHTER

-I mean, that's beyond rude, isn't it?

-Never mind.

But actually, I adore ducks.

I'm happy to be...

to be compared with a duck.

And it certainly allowed you your next big part on television.

You were in the famous, with Colin Firth, Pride And Prejudice,

where you played Caroline Bingley, who's an opinionated snob.

-Yes, she's great, isn't she?

-Yes, here she is banging on.

It might be awful when I see it.

No, no, no.

She's having a few opinions about Elizabeth Bennet here.

For my part, I must confess I never saw any beauty in her face.

Her features are not at all handsome,

her complexion has no brilliancy.

Oh, her teeth are tolerable, I suppose,

but nothing out of the common way.

And as for her eyes, which I have sometimes heard called fine,

I could never perceive anything extraordinary in them.

And in her air altogether,

there is a self-sufficiency without fashion, which I find intolerable.

APPLAUSE

Wonderful.

APPLAUSE

So you're sitting on the fence.

SHE LAUGHS

And of course, your next book is Pride And Prejudice, Jane Austen.

Yes, I thought I might choose THE most famous novel ever written

because I am just a great lover of the novel.

Some people don't like novels.

But I just, I... I'm addicted to a good story.

And I suppose Jane Austen here does manage to marry

-that incredible story with those brilliant characters.

-Yeah.

With great wit.

So funny. And when I read it at school, of course, you know,

loved it at school, pleased to be given a book that you can read.

And then reread again obviously, for the...

for the television programme.

And then, when you are acting in something,

-you have an extra greed for anything they can tell you anything about it.

-Yeah.

So if you look at a painting or if you read literature

or you see a film that can in any way inform you,

you suddenly open your mind

and become a voracious reader or a voracious viewer,

in a way that, up until then, I had no...

It doesn't sort of occur to you to look at things in that way.

And you can match Nicky, again, because you are actually related to Jane Austen.

-I am.

-Yeah. See?

This is just an awful name-dropping session now, isn't it?

Yes, it's wonderful.

She was my, six or maybe eight generations back, my great aunt.

And my grandmother remembered her aunt

talking about Great Aunt Jane and Great Aunt Cass.

It really is extraordinary.

So, within memory, there are people

who would have talked and remembered her. Yeah.

Yes. Nicky, you came back to London

and solely built up a business.

-I came back in '72.

-Yeah.

-From New York after 10, 11 years in America.

And I came back because

a friend of mine had liked the flat in New York and the ranch in Arizona and things,

and I just thought, "Why don't I give him a chance and let him do my house?"

Which brings us, Nicky, to your third book,

which is called Versailles, by Ian Dunlop.

Why have you chosen this?

Being a decorator, a designer,

in the end you have to admit

that the French 18th century is the perfect example of the whole thing.

And this book opens one's eyes to the perfection of

Louis XIV, Louis XV, particularly Louis XVI.

If you look at that period in that book,

can you give me an example of how you would use

something from there in a modern setting?

Well, yes, cos I mean, there are sort of golden rules of decoration.

And if you look at almost any French building, everything has a reason.

And the only reason of anything in decoration is to make more light.

Because in the old days, there was no light,

so everything had to gleam and glitter.

You edged everything in silver or gold, so you've got more light in the room.

It wasn't because we want to look ostentatious.

There's a reason for everything - fascinating.

What do you if you've got an ugly part of the room or a pillar?

Well, you...you block it up

or you cover it with some brilliant device,

-so it takes, your eye goes to something else.

-Yeah.

I mean... There are ugly features in every room,

mostly one's friends.

LAUGHTER

Not yours.

THEY LAUGH

-But you just cover them up.

-Yeah.

-Like polite parents.

-Yeah.

And what do you despair of when you see

a lot of furniture today and the way people decorate their rooms?

I despair of people who haven't got a clue of what they like.

-It's much more interesting, and much more worrying.

-Yeah.

-People who don't know are the hardest people to decorate for.

-Really?

-They don't know what they like.

-Yeah.

You have a huge batch of Russian clients now, do they know what they want?

-Not to begin with. They soon learn when they come to me.

-Do they?

LAUGHTER

So you have a blank canvas?

Certain... Yes. Certain people give one a blank canvas.

And after four or five houses, they say, "Just do it."

Which is quite nice.

Anna, I know that you are currently in rehearsals for The Hour.

-I'm filming now.

-Filming, yes. You've got the hairdo of Lix.

A little bit, yeah.

-It's quite dark, isn't it?

-Yeah, it's lovely.

-Yeah?

-Yeah.

And yet again a very strong woman.

She's in the newsroom as a reporter in the '50s.

And actually, there wouldn't have been many women at that time

in a radio newsroom.

-No.

-Except someone like Lix.

-Yes, who can drink and smoke and who is fearless.

-Yes.

-And who doesn't show her emotions.

-Yeah.

-She's like a bloke.

We've got a little clip of you.

Monitoring are sending through the transcripts of the Egyptian broadcasts.

I need someone to be able to translate.

My man in Alexandria, well...

He does his best but it's, it's schoolboy Arabic.

Lix has got a lackey?

When you have a president of a Middle Eastern country angry with half the Western world,

buying arms off the Soviets and whipping up crowds in Alexandria,

chances are, Egypt leads.

And Westminster's getting a little edgy. Tu ne penses pas?

APPLAUSE

He's gorgeous, isn't he?

And then, I have an affair with him.

-Aren't you lucky!

-I couldn't believe it!

-Yeah.

20 years junior to me.

We thought they were joking when... He-he-he!

-If you were him, you'd hardly argue with her.

-No.

No. If she wanted it, you'd...

Yes, she's a...she's tough.

And it's good, what happens in the next series.

Anyway, we will move on to your final book,

which I loved this book.

Ladder Of Years, Anne Tyler.

-It was published in the mid '90s.

-Yes.

Tell us about it.

-I think she's a terrific writer, Anne Tyler.

-Yes.

What I find so brilliant in my...

I find she's changed my perception on life,

and on people and their behaviour.

Because she sets up characters that you would,

in your life, if you knew people like that,

think that you could... You'd know which way they were going to go.

And she always takes them somewhere else,

so it's totally believable,

and yet, beyond your imagination.

This is about a middle-aged woman,

conventionally American,

married to a doctor who's older and gets ill far too often,

and children that don't really appreciate her.

Everyone's rather bored by her and overlooks her,

nobody thinks she is capable of anything interesting.

And she has an idea, which I'm sure many, many women

at that stage in their life have of just running away from it all.

Yeah.

And I defy you, if you read the first chapter of this, not...not to keep on reading.

Something happens and she thinks,

"I'll just do it."

It's as though that filter in her life, which tells her "better not", goes,

which I've had that sometimes.

I think everyone is tempted, the difference is that she does it.

And it starts when she goes to the supermarket

and a gorgeous young man in there

asks her if she would pretend,

while they are shopping in the supermarket,

to be his new girlfriend,

because his ex-wife and her lover are also shopping.

Yes.

And he wants to look OK, doesn't he?

-Yes, he wants to have a beard, so to speak.

-Yes.

-Are you going to read an extract for us?

-Yeah, yes.

"She would have feared that he was trying to pick her up,

"except that when she turned she saw he was surely ten years her junior,

"and very good-looking besides.

"He had straight, dark-yellow hair and milky blue eyes

"that made him seem dreamy and peaceful.

"He was smiling down at her,

"standing a little closer than strangers ordinarily stand.

"'Um...,' she said, flustered. 'Shallots,' he reminded her.

"'Shallots are fatter,' she said.

"She set the celery in her grocery cart.

"'I believe they are above the parsley,' she called over her shoulder,

"but she found him next to her, keeping step with her

"as she wheeled her cart toward the citrus fruits.

"He wore blue jeans, very faded, and soft moccasins

"that couldn't be heard above King Of The Road on the public sound system.

"'I also need lemons,' he told her.

"She slid another glance at him.

"'Look,' he said suddenly. He lowered his voice. 'Could I ask you a big favour?'

"'Um...' 'My ex-wife is ahead in potatoes.

"'Or not ex I guess but estranged, let's say,

"'and she's got her boyfriend with her.

"'Could you just pretend we're together?

"'Just till I can duck out of here?' 'Well, of course,' said Delia.

"And without even taking a deep breath first,

"she plunged happily back into the old high-school atmosphere

"of romantic intrigue and deception.

"She narrowed her eyes, lifted her chin and said,

"'We'll show her!'

"And sailed past fruits and made a U-turn into root vegetables."

LAUGHTER

-It's good, isn't it?

-Oh, fabulous, fabulous!

Much recommended.

Nicky, your final choice of book.

Well, I'd, I...unlike you, I don't read novels.

It's the only thing I really don't... I don't like fiction,

I like truth, biography, interest, geography, travel, etc.

-But my favourite book in the world is a novel.

-OK.

And it's called A Legacy by Sybille Bedford.

She is, I think, the greatest writer I've ever known.

Tell us a bit about her.

She is half German,

she lived in Rome, the south of France, London,

she was the best friend of Huxley.

That kind of world.

And she just writes the most perfect prose I've ever known, I've ever read.

And A Legacy is really her life and her family,

done...and her past done as a novel.

But it actually is her, you can tell all the way through.

So it is autobiographical, actually.

Totally. Totally autobiographical.

-And it starts in Germany.

-It starts in Germany.

It comes all the way through to 1946 in the south of France.

And considering that English was her second language,

she just writes so beautifully.

Yes, she polished and polished, and when I was writing that book,

I'd ring her up, and I was panic-struck about things.

She just said, "Read again, polish it. Read it again, polish it.

"Read this sentence. Take this out. Read, read, read. Polish, polish, polish."

So you knew her?

-Yeah.

-Of course(!)

-Well, I made a particular effort to know her, because I admired her so much.

-Yeah.

And we had the same doctor, that helped.

-Could you read us a little bit?

-All right.

This is about her grandparents, the Merz's.

"They had no interests, tastes or thoughts beyond their family

"and the comfort of their persons.

"While members of what might have been their world

"were dining to the sounds of Schubert and Haydn,

"endowing research and adding Corot landscapes to their Bouchers and Delacroix,

"and some of them were buying their first Picasso,

"the Merz's were adding bell-pulls and thickening the upholstery.

"No music was heard at Voss Strasse outside the ballroom and the day nursery.

"They never travelled. They never went to the country.

"They never went anywhere, except to take a cure,

"and then they went in a private railway carriage, taking their own sheets.

"They took no exercise and practised no sport.

"They kept no animals, except carriage horses,

"and none were allowed in the house.

"The caretaker had a canary in their basement by the furnace,

"but no truffled nose had ever snuffed the still hot air upstairs,

"no padded paw had trod the Turkey pile,

"no tooth had gnawed, no claw ripped the mahogany and the plush,

"and there was a discreet mousetrap set in every room."

Wonderful detail!

Oh! It's just... It's like a film, isn't it?

You've both sold your books very well indeed.

Anna Chancellor, Nicky Haslam. Thank you so much.

APPLAUSE

And just to remind you, details of the series are, of course, on the BBC website.

You can also hear our guests

read a passage from their favourite

children's book.

And please join me again tomorrow.

Same time, same place. Good night.

APPLAUSE

Subtitles by Red Bee Media Ltd