Anna Pavord

From Arifa Akbar's Q & A with Anna Pavord, author of The Curious Gardener:

Choose a favourite author and say why you like him/her

Living here [in Dorset], Thomas Hardy still terrifies me with that awful sense that hung over his novels. I don't want to feel Dorset is like that, but what I rate him on more is as a writer of landscape - his description of the animal nature of tree roots, that almost suffocating feeling of woodland all around you.

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Which fictional character most resembles you?

I read so much more non-fiction that I don't have enough models in my mind.

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Who is your hero/heroine from outside literature?

Professor Richard Hoggart, who was my tutor at university and who wrote 'The Uses of Literacy'. He was the first person who tried to explain that you can't read George Eliot in isolation from her time or religion, that everything connects. I've tried never to forget that, even when writing about gardening.

Read the complete Q & A.

--Marshal Zeringue