Nicholas Shakespeare

And so only last year did I manage to read Middlemarch for the first time and Jane Eyre and Jane Austen.

So I feel very unread in the English classics.

And I have to say, I didn't think Middlemarch was all it was cracked up to be.

I much preferred Jane Eyre, but that's apparently, I'm not allowed to say that.

But I thought Middlemarch was very, very good, but slightly too pleased with itself.

Anyway, it's rather interesting to have that reaction.

You know, I'm in my early 60s, so I'm approaching it freshly without any prejudice.

And I rather enjoy that.

So I've got the whole of, I've never read any Scott.

I've never read any Dickens.

So I'm really looking forward to discovering Dickens from a slightly quieter position than having to cram him for an exam when I'm 17.

What else will I think when I stop Skyping you?

I'm a great admirer of your contemporary writer Murray Bale in Australia.

He's a friend, but he's also a very, very powerful minimalist writer.

I love a Canadian writer called Elizabeth Hay.

And she wrote a novel called A Student of Weather, which I've read seven times.

And that released me.

I was clogged up with a novel.

I was writing it in Tasmania.

And I'd written it for three years.