Margaret Drabble: The Book That…
Margaret Drabble is one of England’s leading contemporary writers. Find out about the books that have made a lasting impression on her reading life.
Margaret Drabble’s many novels began with A Summer Birdcage (1963); she edited The Oxford Companion to English Literature (1985); and most recently she has published a memoir, The Pattern in the Carpet: A Personal History with Jigsaws.
Born and schooled in the north of England, she went to university in Cambridge, and then lived for many years in London. She now divides her time between London and Somerset, and finds herself increasingly drawn to the West Country, and to the landscapes of the early poems of Wordsworth and Coleridge.
I first loved…
The Radiant Way, a reading primer. I loved learning to read, and I enjoyed this book, even though it is quite dull. My father taught me when he came home from the RAF and this is how he got to know me again at the end of the war.
I keep by my bedside…
Dante’s Divine Comedy and a Biblical Concordance. I don’t read them very often, but they are always there, just in case.
I want to read next…
Whatever David Lodge publishes next, and I hope it’s soon, as I so enjoy his novels
I loved as a child…
I loved the Orlando books by Kathleen Hale, and most of Alison Uttley.
Kept me awake at night…
The last book that literally kept me awake until I’d finished it was J.G.Ballard’s The Empire of the Sun. It is an extraordinarily powerful narrative, unlike any other memoir.
Made me laugh…
Dan Rhodes’s Gold. He is one of our funniest contemporary writers, and the Pub Quiz in this novel is excellent. I am delighted that he won the 2010 E.M.Forster Award from the American Academy of Arts and Letters
Made me cry…
The Mill on the Floss by George Eliot. I sympathised deeply with poor Maggie Tulliver and was very distressed when she drowned.
Changed my life…
Doris Lessing’s The Golden Notebook. Powerful, unflinching, transforming.
