I’ve always been a reader, the longer the book the better. I like disappearing into vast tomes or, better still, series. If I’d been asked, as a child, if I’d like a collection of short stories, my answer would have been an emphatic no. It would never have occurred to me to read something that might only take minutes to complete, instead of hiding under the bedclothes into the dark hours, with a torch, desperate to read just one more page – or chapter – or volume. I did O level (GCSE in new money) English Lit at school. Not a great success. It wasn’t the books we had to study so much as being told what we supposed to think about them and how we should interpret them. I must say it did force me to read one Dickens novel from start to finish (Hard Times), which was an achievement because I like nearly all Victorian novelist, but can’t abide Mr Popular Sentiment. I’d much sooner read Mrs Gaskell’s North and South that Dickens’ Hard Times, both about the industrial north, trade union...
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