Forum Topic

Great works of literature for lockdown

I'm cracking through more books at the moment that I would normally do at any other time than when I am on holiday. It probably is the time to raise my game a bit because Lee Child has only written so many Jack Reacher novels and I might regret it if I haven't tried anything more improving. Does anyone have suggestions for their favourite classics of English literature that need to be read before we can start going out again?

Mark Evans ● 2393d18 Comments

1984, Animal Farm - George OrwellBrave New World - Aldous Huxleynever been more topical imo, read or to read again

Claudia Jachtmann ● 2393d

Personally I love the Victorians and Augustans - eg Tom Jones, Vanity Fair, pretty much anything by George Eliot (Middlemarch and the Mill on the Floss are my favourites) and Thomas Hardy.

Claire Moran ● 2393d

also Chiswick author Sadie Jones - The OutcastandMaggie O'Farrell - The hand that first held mine are classic to me

Claudia Jachtmann ● 2393d

Why not follow Harold MacMillan's advice and "Go to bed with a Trollope"?I must confess that I'm not reading Anthony Trollope's novels themselves just now, but only because I still have a backlog of other books on my shelf I'm ploughing through.However, BBC Radio 4 Extra frequently broadcasts their adaptations, which I have recorded and provide for hours of wonderful listening, esp the Barchester Towers series.See also https://trollopesociety.org/

Richard Cathcart ● 2393d

I really enjoyed the following recently 'The places in between' - by Rory Stewart (yes that Rory)'The entrepreneurial state', and 'the value of everything' by Professor Marianna Mazzucato'prisoners of Geography' by local resident Tim Marshall

Matthew Swain ● 2393d

I have just finished The Fortnight in September by RC Sherriff (of Journey’s End fame).  Set in the early thirties it follows a lower middle class London family on their regular two-week holiday to Bognor Regis where nothing much happens.  But it somehow manages to be one of the most moving and riveting novels I have read in years.  Kazuo Ishiguro rates it too.

Alastair Banton ● 2393d

One that might help you put this lockdown in perspective is Helen Dunmore's the Siege. Gripping and not overly long.

Anita Blake ● 2393d

Not a great reader of classics - although I loved War and Peace. Give me anything by Val McDermid, Mark Billingham, Peter James, Peter Robinson, or Kathy Reichs, a good murder. Or any showbiz/political autobiography/biography, just read biography of Winston Churchill, will be so glad when the library re-opens...................

Vanessa Smith ● 2393d

As you like thrillers, I’d suggest Wilkie Collins, Armadale or No Name as well  as TheMoonstone or Woman in White: all have intricate plots, well thought through. Or more up to date, Raymond Chandler.

Vivienne Cox ● 2393d

If you want to put what we are experiencing in perspective (and feel some hope as well) I highly recommend Nella Lasts Mass Observation Diaries from the 1940s.

Carolyn Valder ● 2393d

King of The World - David Remnick

Simon Temple ● 2393d

I'm finishing off George MacDonald Fraser's excellent wartime memoir "Quartered Safe Out Here", but once that's finished I think it will be the perfect time to finally give Gabriel García Marquéz's "One Hundred Years of Solitude" a go.

Mike Firth ● 2393d

The great thing about the classics is that they are generally free to download.'Our Mutual Friend' by Charles Dickens.'Jane Eyre' by Charlotte Bronte. D. H. Lawrence 'said it vergedon pornography' but I can assure you, he was wrong! 'North and South' by Elizabeth Gaskell .

David McLoughlin ● 2393d

'The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists' by Robert Tressell. Influential political novel from the 1900s.

Peter Evans ● 2393d

Try the trilogy of novels by James Ellroy on American history in the sixties and seventies starting with American Tabloid. The author of recent Booker Prize winner Brief History of Seven Killings acknowledges his debt to Ellroy and, although the prize-winning book is very good, it is clearly derivative and inferior to Ellroy's work.

Paul Corcoran ● 2393d

I would add two other Bronte novels to the suggestion of ' Jane Eyre' - my 'desert Island novel' Emily's 'Wuthering Heights', plus the often unregarded Anne's 'The Tenant of Wildfell Hall'. But if you prefer something less Victorian, try these works from the 1930s: 'South Riding' by Winifred Holtby, and 'Lost Horizon' by James Hilton. Plus any of Graham Greene's 30s 'entertainments' such as 'Stamboul Train' or 'The Ministry of Fear'.

Arnold Saxton ● 2393d

Anthony Powell's 'Dance to the Music of Time' (12 novels) is a good read, as is anything by Patrick Leigh Fermor, from his accounts of walking from Holland to Constantinople in the thirties (3 books), to his experiences of fighting with the partisans in Crete during the German occupation in WWII, including the kidnapping of the German commander, Kreipe. Another terrific read about this period is 'The Cretan Runner', by George Psykoundakis, who, a teenager from a tiny village, carried messages between the intelligence-gathering units hiding in the mountains.

Colin Jordan ● 2393d

Have seen the brilliant Victoria Wood adaption of Nella's story several times.

Vanessa Smith ● 2392d