What were you reading when you were a teenager?
Miss Good:To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee
Dr Hudson: Aged 13 and 14, mostly Marvel comics. I collected them and had complete sets of all the major titles. I have just depressed myself by checking how valuable one of the comics I then owned would now be: Amazing Fantasy No.15, the first appearance of Spider Man, apparently sold seven years ago at auction for $1.1! I bought it for half a crown (12½ p) – that price including a few others – at a second-hand bookshop in Aldershot in 1969.
I also had a copy of each of the original Incredible Hulk series, which ran to only six issues. I sold the lot when I was 15 in order to buy a guitar amp. And I started reading proper books, too, beginning – as I recall – with Great Expectations. Moral of the story? If you want to be rich, kids, keep away from Rock and Roll and Dickens.
Mr Young: Well, I have to admit that I tended to prioritise playing sport of any kind during my teenage years but did get stuck into a few books by the saints – St Basil's On the Making of Man, St Bonaventure's The Soul's Journey into God, etc.
I also loved the Chronicles of Narnia and then later on moved onto reading arguments for and against God - The God Delusion by Richard Dawkins, God is not Great by Christopher Hitchens, The Rage against God by Peter Hitchens, Straw Dogs by John Gray, There is a God by Anthony Flew.
What are you planning to read this summer?
Miss Good: Travellers in the Third Reich by Julia Boyd
Dr Hudson: As I’m leaving the school and getting rid of a lot of books, I have taken the opportunity to pare down my shelves here and at home to those books I want to read or those I have read and wish to keep. There is roughly the same high number of each, so I’ll have to get on with it. I might start with Mary Barton by Elizabeth Gaskell.
Mr Young: Well, I’ve just ordered I and Thou by Martin Buber and The Practice of the Presence of God by Brother Laurence… alongside watching the World Cup!
What/who is your all-time favourite book/writer?
Miss Good: Thérèse Desqueroux by Francois Mauriac
Dr Hudson: Shakespeare. He puts it so well. But Austen is a very close second and has the advantage of a much better sense of humour.
Mr Young: I always have a childish soft spot for Roald Dahl, he made reading fun and my imagination sore. However, my favourite book is Unapologetic by Francis Spufford – he really made me consider the Church, Christianity and Jesus Christ in a different way.
Who’s your favourite fictional character?
Miss Good: Atticus Finch
Dr Hudson: William Brown, schoolboy hero of Richmal Crompton’s books. Eternally optimistic and doomed to failure. That’s the human condition, right there.
William Brown (as played by former SPS Head of Systems and Control Mr Rokison)
Mr Young: Professor James Moriarty – a top ‘baddy’
Do you have a favourite word/favourite line from a book?
Miss Good: 'Courage is when you know you're licked before you begin but you begin anyway and you see it through no matter what.(Atticus Finch)
Dr Hudson: ‘My mind is full of scorpions, dear wife.’ (from Macbeth)
(Tom Attenborough in Dr Hudson's production of Macbeth)
Mr Young: 'You must forgive in order to understand. Until you forgive, you defend yourself against the possibility of understanding.' ― Marilynne Robinson, Home
If you had to recommend one book that everyone should read, what would it be?
Miss Good: To Kill a Mockingbird
Dr Hudson: Tess of the d’Urbervilles by Thomas Hardy. It’s not a comedy, though, be warned.
Mr Young: Mere Christianity or The Screw-tape Letters by C S Lewis – really good books to get you thinking.
Many thanks to Miss Good, Dr Hudson and Mr Young for taking the time to answer our questions, and we wish them all the best for life beyond SPS!
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