Books

I read very little in the way of children's literature when growing up. Instead, I read about cars, motorbikes, aeroplanes, soldiers et cetera. I soon took to reading Jack Higgins, Len Deighton, Ed McBain, Alistair Maclean, Frederick Forsyth, Lesley Thomas, each one gifted and entertaining but in different ways.

Jack Higgins writes pulp thrillers with rough diamond characters and plenty of action. Len Deighton's novels are slower paced and more nuanced. His spy novels are superb but it was his wartime stories which really grabbed me; Goodbye Mickey Mouse and Bomber. Reading these I was astonished at how he took a complex situation, which he had not experienced personally and wrote about it with precision and conviction.

Ed McBain's police procedurals, set in the fictional US city of Isola, are character-led, and the characters in question are so good that you could happily read about them in the absence of an actual plot.

Tomorrow, I will continue with this rich seam of recollections.