Róisín Ingle

I think that's all my holidays.

Oh, we're going to Edinburgh just for a day, though, because my friend has a play in the Edinburgh Festival.

So that'll be a nice holiday.

And yeah.

The book that I chose first was given to me by my mother a couple of Christmases ago because she was trying to get me to read some books that you sort of, in a way they're books you should read.

The Guardian, if there is any such a thing as a book you should read, but The Guardian had a list recently.

Did you see it, Claire?

The 100 Best, Greatest Novels?

Nope.

Anyway, they had this big list.

And this was actually, I went to look and this was number 21.

It's The Portrait of a Lady by Henry James.

Has anyone read it?

Okay, some people have, yeah.

it's quite a long book and my mum gave it to me, a lovely version of it, actually it's not the one I have here, it's a sort of small hardback, it was beautiful and I just, the reason I've chosen it is because I think sometimes when you're reading a lot of contemporary books it's hard to go back maybe to classics or books that you feel you've kind of somehow not got around to and I

I think it's good to do that sometimes.

And I remember just that Christmas when I got the book from my mum, just sitting in, I just have a memory of sitting in front of the fire in an armchair, like just lost in this book for ages, for hours, you know.

And it's about this woman, Isabel Archer.

You probably know her name as she's a very big character in literature.

She's kind of independent, fierce woman of her time.