What were you reading when you were a teenager?
Mr Hempstead: I spent a lot of time on the cricket and football pitch as a teenager, but as I lived in the middle of nowhere I did manage to read quite a bit. The Lord of the Rings absorbed me for an entire Christmas holidays when I was about 15, and I read pretty much the complete works of Steinbeck from the ages of 14 to 17 as my parents had the full set on their bookshelf. I particularly like The Winter of our Discontent – it seemed to me to be a bit more nuanced than some of the others – and I enjoyed the more comedic works. The ne’er-do-wells of Cannery Row reminded me of a lot of men in my village!
Miss Cogbill: At school I read To Kill a Mockingbird and it really stuck with me, I’ve read it again and again since. I also loved I Capture the Castle.
Dr Weller: Ben Okri's The Famished Road (Booker shortlist around the time), Terry Pratchett's The Colour of Magic, Terry Brook's Magic Kingdom series, Greg Bear's Anvil of God, Douglas Adams's Hitchhiker's Guide - just about any sci-fi I could get my hands on/
Mrs Holmes: Other than set books as a teenager I remember reading Gone with the Wind by Margret Mitchell, Exodus by Leon Uris and Ian Fleming's James Bond novels.
Mr Toller: John Buchan, Charles Dickens, Dorothy L.Sayers, mathematics books, books about music and architecture.
Mr Espey: Novels, mostly. The summer before college, I read The City and the Pillar and seriously considered joining the merchant marine (a brief Google search made me realize it was probably less gay and more manual labor than Gore Vidal made it sound…) The Bell Jar was another stand out from that same summer. I read a lot of history for a while too. I remember with particular fondness Brunelleschi's Dome by Ross King and Warriors of God, James Reston, Jr.’s epic account of the Third Crusade.
What are you planning to read this summer?
Mr Hempstead:I’m revisiting Albert Andersch’s Sansibar oder der letzte Grund, which I studied for A-level, as I’m planning to re-learn German.
Miss Cogbill: I’ve got a big list building up based on recommendations: And The Mountains Echoed by Khaled Hosseini because I enjoyed A Thousand Splendid Suns and The Kite Runner. Eleanor Oliphant is Completely Fine seems to be the book of the moment that I see people reading on the tube all the time, and I’m looking forward to reading that.
Dr Weller: Eric Topiol's Deep Medicine, Omar Abbosh's Pivot to the Future, John Coates's The Hour Between Dog and Wolf, and Allen Downey Think Bayes. New sci fi and spy fi.
Mrs Holmes: This summer I plan to read Unsheltered by Barbara Kingsolver and 21 Lessons for the 21st Century by Yuval Noah Harari.
Mr Toller: I have a long list of books that are glowering at me from my bookshelves. A pretty mixed lot: novels by Meredith and Harrison Ainsworth, history books by Norman Davies (Vanished Kingdoms) and J.H.Elliott (Empires of the Atlantic), Roger Scruton’s Modern Philosophy, and a lot of lighter things.
Mr Espey: I have Yu Miri’s Tokyo Ueno Station for the plane ride home, and then On Earth We're Briefly Gorgeous, Ocean Vuong’s debut novel, waiting for me when I get there (my mother read one review and immediately bought a copy, ostensibly for herself, but I think it was really a ploy to get me home.) I’m also planning to tackle Burke’s Reflections on the Revolution in France when I’ve recovered the mental resources for it. My friends from university are all reading Middlemarch and I haven’t decided if I will too.
What/who is your all-time favourite book/writer?
Miss Cogbill: It’s got to be Kristin Hannah or Khaled Hosseini. Both of them tell beautiful stories, where you really feel for the characters.
Dr Weller: Tolkien & Greene are the keys to my reading passions
Mrs Holmes: My all time favourite book is V. S Naipaul's A House For Mr Biswas; it follows that Mr Biswas is a favourite character.
Mr Toller: Probably Edward Gibbon whose prose style, coupled with his sense of humour, is one of the major joys of life. I also love Sir Thomas Browne’s Urn-Burial, and Henry James’s late style. Probably my favourite classic novel is Vanity Fair.
Mr Espey: I’m going to say Haruki Murakami is my favorite author, mainly because I’m in the middle of Killing Commendatore right now and it’s utterly mesmerizing. His novels are inscrutable, delicate, and unpretentiously intertextual. His detached but deeply sensitive narrators always end up listening to classical music and cooking spaghetti. Kafka on the Shore was my introduction to Murakami but Colorless Tsukuru Tazaki and His Years of Pilgrimage remains my personal favorite.
Who’s your favourite fictional character?
Mr Hempstead: I really enjoy the company of the anonymous narrator of Jean Giono’s Les Grands Chemins. You follow him through a series of picaresque, booze-fuelled adventures, never knowing quite what to make of this entertaining, multi-tasking, generous, brutal and not entirely truthful companion. At the end, you gain the impression not so much of having finished the book as of having been abandoned by its narrator, who simply walks out.
Dr Weller: Arthur Dent
Mrs Holmes: Mr Biswas
Mr Toller: Oh gosh. My Uncle Toby (Tristram Shandy)? Mr Bennet (Pride and Prejudice)? Proust’s Narrator?
Mr Espey: Stephen Dedalus. I tried hard to pick someone else…anyone else…but it had to be him.
Do you have a favourite word/favourite line from a book?
Mr Hempstead: 'Mann kann alles richtig machen, und dabei das wichtigste versäumen', from Sansibar. (“You can do everything just right, and in so doing miss out on what’s most important.”)
Miss Cogbill: 'I would always rather be happy than dignified' – Jane Eyre.
Dr Weller: It's a poem. 'We shall not cease from exploration/And the end of all our exploring/Will be to arrive where we started/And know the place for the first time.' 'Little Gidding' from Four Quartets - T.S. Eliot
Mr Toller: 'Twenty-two acknowledged concubines and a library of sixty-two thousand volumes attested the variety of his inclinations; and from the productions he left behind him, it appears the former as well as the latter were designed for use rather than ostentation.' [Gibbon, of course – who else? The subject is the Emperor Gordian.]
Mr Espey: The opening sentence of Beckett’s Murphy: 'The sun shone, having no alternative, on the nothing new.'
If you had to recommend one book that everyone should read, what would it be?
Miss Cogbill: This is really hard! The Nightingale by Kristin Hannah is brilliant. Or for an easy read on a beach, it’s got to be The Lovely Bones by Alice Sebold. I also really enjoyed Marching Powder, which gives an unbelievably stark insight into Bolivian prisons. It’s based on a true story and is fascinating.
Dr Weller: Charles Stross Accelerando
Mrs Holmes: Everyone should read Kingsolver's The Poisonwood Bible. A favourite author is Michael Ondaatje.
Mr Toller: Any book about the European, and particularly the German, nineteenth century – without that we can’t understand where we are today.
Mr Espey: If you’ve ever had a class with me, you’ve heard me talk about the Zhuangzi, a collection of ancient Taoist parables; if you were listening, I left you confused. Usually humorous, always obscure, these stories are radically skeptical about the possibility of knowledge. Take what Master Zhuang calls 'the Transformation of Things.' He dreams he is a butterfly, and upon waking, wonders how he can know that he is once again really Master Zhuang and not a butterfly dreaming he is Master Zhuang. There is no book I think about as often as the Zhuangzi.
Many thanks to Mr Hempstead, Miss Cogbill, Dr Weller, Mrs Holmes, Mr Toller and Mr Espey for generously taking the time to respond to our questions, and we wish them all the best for life beyond SPS!
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