Reading

One of my great failings is my lack of reading. I derive such pleasure from reading that it is astonishing how little I’ve read over the years. Every once in a while, I get stuck into a book and if I can quickly find the next one to read, I may devour four or five in a row. And then nothing. For years. (I’m excluding the vast quantity of history books I have to read when I write the Horrible Histories stage shows). So I am really pleased to have got into another glut and this time it is biographies. I’ve heard that it’s common for men to eschew fiction and I am not an exception. I am now onto my umpteenth biography, partly because the lives I’ve been reading have been so beautifully and fascinatingly revealed: Demi Moore, Sharon Stone, Sinead O’Connor, Brian Cox, Geena Davis, Lisa Edwards and now Paul Newman. This latest book is wonderful, not least because it lay undiscovered for years, until his family found the copious pages he had worked on with a friend and they hired a writer to put them together. His discernment of himself is profound, complex and often beyond my understanding. It is also seeringly and brutally honest, in a way you would not expect from a Hollywood star. I can thoroughly recommend all the biographies above. And while I’m here, two books about the Middle East have also kept me gripped beyond measure – Rise And Kill First by Ronan Bergman (the history of the Israeli secret services) and The Making of the Modern Middle East by Jeremy Bowen. I really hope I can keep this up.