I borrowed The Pleasure of Reading edited by Antonia Fraser from the library, it’s a collection of the thoughts of 43 writers, about discovering reading and the books that inspired them. The book was originally published in 1992 and then again in 2015 with five new authors having been added to the list of contributors, all of the proceeds from sale went to the charity Give a Book.

As ever with books like this it’s good in parts. One problem is that for me anyway quite a lot of the writers were not known to me, but then I’m not really into the theatre so I don’t know of that many playwrights. It always helps if you know of the person who is writing their thoughts on books. Having said that, the piece that I enjoyed reading most was by Gita Mehti who described her early life in India and the secondhand booksellers who shouted about their wares from pavements and even on the steps of trains.

Quite a few of the writers were at pains to slag off Blyton, as if they were above all that nonsense, but I’m quite happy to admit that I adored being a part of The Famous Five – so to speak, and I went straight from reading them to going onto Agatha Christie. That was the only downside really as I missed out on so many books for children, and I’m still trying to catch up with those ones nowadays.

Lots of the contributors are dead now, I think it’s probably time that a new edition was compiled, I’m sure that the book charity could use the money well.