Meg Rosoff

more or less my age in England, had read it as schoolboys.

And when I said, what's it about?

They all said, oh, well, it's a pirate adventure story.

But it's not a pirate adventure story.

There is a pirate adventure story in there, but it's basically the story of a family of kids who are sent from Jamaica back to England to be educated.

And when they're two or three days out, the boat is overtaken by pirates.

And it's then a story of how these children meticulously destroy the lives of these

slightly hapless pirates and it's the funniest and the darkest and one of the most upsetting books about childhood that i have ever read in my life so i think everyone should get a copy of it so that's one book i read and that was a couple of years ago the book that i read this summer that that blew my mind was of course hillary mantel and the new version the new the third um the mirror and the light

Yes, in the Wolf Hall trilogy.

And, you know, if you want to find a kind of silver lining in lockdown, it's been that, I mean, I haven't done a lot of reading, strangely.

I've done a lot of writing, but not that much reading.

But I had the time to carefully read every single page of that book.

I wasn't in a rush.

I wasn't distracted.

I just spent three weeks reading.

doing almost nothing but reading The Mirror and The Light.

And my God, that woman can, I mean, I've just never read anything like it.

And when, and I don't think this is a spoiler, if you've ever read any history, when Thomas Cromwell is arrested and then executed, I was devastated.

I, you know, I said in an article I was interviewed for in this country, that it affected me more than the deaths of members of my own family affected me.

I mean, I just lay in bed staring at the ceiling in a state of absolute desperate grief.