What is the best book you have ever read?

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I think mine has to be (at least at the moment) The House at the End of Hope Street because I grew up not far from there.

Which is your favourite book and why?

I can't pick just one but the following I can read over and over again:

Pride and Prejudice - timeless
Jurassic Park - dinosaurs
The Lost World - more dinosaurs
The Lord of the Rings - epic
One Hundred Years of Solitude - magical
All the Harry Potters - literally magical
Anything by Bill Bryson - laugh out loud
Anything by James Herriot - my career inspiration
The Master and Margarita - genius

Birdsong by Sebastian Faulks

Nineteen Eighty Four.

Hands down my winner.

Reason is just how fucking gritty and depressing and prophetic it is.

The Weirdstone Of Brisingamen. Read it as a child at school and have loved it ever since.

A Prayer For Owen Meany

Disgrace by JM Coetzee. There is not one spare word in that book.

I couldn't do it. Every single one said above plus about ten million others. If a gun was to my head, to kill a mockingbird.

Agree Disgrace is v, v good. Didn't get the Nobel prize for nowt, still v readable.

Another struggling to pick just one, so I'll go with the one that surprised me most, which was when I picked up The Pillars of the Earth by Ken Follett as I was about to fly to Greece for a weeks holiday years ago and absolutely loved it.

Maybe not my favourite (and I couldn't pick just one anyway) but Cormac Mccarthy's The Road is seared into my brain. Read it a few years ago and will never forget it. Very spare and very grim.

I've ordered the Owen Meany book. Pillars of the Earth was amazing.

A Thousand Splendid Suns and Wild Swans, but also Trainspotting, Pride and Prejudice, The Mayor of Casterbridge and Wuthering Heights. Too many I know and I've not got onto children's books I love

The books which have poleaxed me in the past few years

• 100 years of solitude
• A Little Life (Hana Yanagihara)
• Any Human Heart (William Boyd)
• The Goldfinch (Donna Tartt)
• A God In Ruins (Kate Atkinson)
• The Line of Beauty (Alan Hollinghurst)

My lifetime favourites

• War and Peace
• Sense and Sensibility
• Their Eyes Were Watching God (Zora Neale Hurston)
• Love in a Cold Climate
• All of the Molly Keane novels

Owen Meany will make you cry. Wonderful book. There was a movie made of it and it was shockingly bad!

The Shellseekers - Rosamunde Pilcher
Phantom - Susan Kay
Rebecca - Daphne du Maurier
To Kill A Mockingbird - Harper Lee
Anything by Bill Bryson

I will be going to bed with Bill Bryson shortly via my Kindle.

I loved Cider House Rules.

I Capture the Castle
Jamaica Inn
All Jane Austen
The Sun Also Rises

Kushiels Dart by Jacqueline Carey, an epic muti story line read, beautifully written love/ spy/ fantasy story, strong female lead.
Diana by RF Delderfield.
Polo by July Cooper.
The S,one Jumper by Nicholas Evans

Not sure of my ultimate but, the first five people you meet in heaven by mitch albom. Stayed with me for a long time

It's impossible to pick one.

I know it's a cliche but War and Peace really is absolutely mindblowing - if you can get past the first chapter - i just read it as if it were supposed to be a joke, then kept going, then i couldn't stop.

Read Lucky Jim several times and the 2 Kate Atkinsons, A God in Ruins and Life after Life were excellent.

God Collar by Marcus Brigstocke, it makes me laugh out loud!

The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay, Michael Chabon
What a carve up, Jonathan Coe
Rebecca, Daphne du Maurier
Atonement, Ian McEwan
Are the first ones that come to mind. I must get back into reading again!

City of Joy by Dominique Lapierre, a book i'll never forget.