School didn’t ruin any books for me. Sometimes analysing them was a slog, but I love reading and I liked the variety of books we read over the years. Jean Valjean, Cue for Treason, Lord of the Flies… Some of them I’ve gone back and re-read again.

I had to put Elmer Gantry down a couple of times. There were scenes where his behaviour was just so disgusting and sociopathic it actually disturbed me. I eventually finished the book, but it took a little while.

A couple books really impacted me - Foucault’ s Pendulum by Umberto Eco, and Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad. They really got me thinking about things from a different perspective.

For me, the best page turners are anything by, say, Agatha Christie, James Herriot, maybe Patrick O’Brian. Nothing too cerebral, but, as Arthur Conan Doyle said, a “rattling good yarn”, that makes you want to see what happens next.