Catherine Rundell

So my great hero is John Donne.

I teach his poetry at Oxford and I did a doctorate, which was for very painful years.

But even after those four painful years, I still loved his poetry.

He is known for being passionate.

perhaps difficult and perhaps sometimes stubborn of sense but when you work out the poem it's the same pleasure as cracking a safe and his strangeness with language is his refusal to be pinned down by the way it was used.

He broke every convention in the book and I find him electric.

When I was young, my parents used to put poems on the wall next to the mirror where we brushed our teeth.

Oh, excellent plan.

plastic dog figurines.

So I would memorise these poems as a bid to get more pocket money.

And then eventually, once we stopped being paid, we were still memorising them.

So I have this cache of poetry in my head.

And a lot of it is John Donne.

I was too young to understand, but not too young to understand the beauty.

I think the book that I have loved most for the longest period, I fell in love with Emma by Jane Austen when I was about 12.

And I fell in love at the time with the wit and with the characters.

And every three or four years, I reread it.

And every three or four years, I realized that I didn't understand it in full the last time.

And I think the definition of a story...

A classic is one that just endlessly renews itself, that comes back for you.