From his Q & A with Anna Metcalfe at the Financial Times:
What book changed your life?Read the complete interview.
Father and Son [1907] by Edmund Gosse, which I read when I was 14. It’s about a young man who abandons his religion. It gave me permission to do the same.
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Who are your literary influences?
Writers who taught me literature is the greatest adventure. It was Enid Blyton and her Noddy books from age four, and then Ian Fleming’s Live And Let Die when I was 12. And Stephen King.
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Who would you choose to play you in a film about your life?
George Clooney. But my kids would laugh their socks off so I’d say Sir Robert Stephens, who played the best Falstaff I’ve seen.
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What book do you wish you’d written?
The Silence of the Lambs by Thomas Harris. I wish I had created Hannibal Lecter.
Eye of the Needle is one of Louise Bagshawe's five classic chase novels.
--Marshal Zeringue