WHAT BOOK would author, journalist and broadcaster Jonathan Freedland take to a desert

…are you reading now?

I confess, I am one of those people who has several books on the go at once, forming a tottering pile on the bedside table. Pride of place at the moment goes to Revolutionary Spring, by the brilliant historian Christopher Clark, an exhilarating new account of the revolutions of 1848.

The book is full of characters, colour and story, but also makes the arresting case that the revolutions are wrongly described as ‘failed’ – that, on the contrary, they changed Europe and the world in ways felt to this day. Clark is great company on this journey across a changing continent: he’s the history teacher you wished you’d had.

….would you take to a desert island?

It would have to be a book that I have not yet read but have always meant to get around to.

Jonathan Freedland confesses that he is one of those people who has several books on the go at once, forming a tottering pile on the bedside table

It would need to have a towering reputation: you couldn’t risk being stuck with a dud. And, just to be practical, it would also have to be long enough to sustain several months, if not years, of reading — if only because I’ve little confidence that I could build the raft that would get me off the island any time soon.

With that in mind, it would be a contest between Proust’s Remembrance Of Things Past and Tolstoy’s War And Peace: the one with the greatest number of pages wins.

…first gave you the reading bug?

Could there be a less fashionable name to mention than Enid Blyton? She was cancelled before being cancelled was even a thing. And yet, honesty trumps fashion, so I have to confess that, when it comes to reading, I am twice indebted to Ms Blyton.

Enid Blyton first gave him the reading bug

My earliest memory of being hooked by a book, of having to turn the pages, of being desperate to know what happens next and how the puzzle will be solved, is tied to the Famous Five stories. Of course, they’re easy to mock now – the casual prejudice, the sexism and snobbery – but they grabbed my young mind and, if only in that simple way, showed me what a book can do.

But I owe a prior debt to that same Enid Blyton: I’m told that the first book I learned to read for myself was Blyton’s Bimbo And Topsy which, whatever those words might imply now, was the story of a cat and a dog. I just can’t remember which was which.

…left you cold?

When I was nine, everyone in my class was reading J.R.R. Tolkien’s Lord Of The Rings. Lugging around the fat, single volume became a kind of playground status symbol. I tried and tried again, but I just could not get on with it.

Even as a child, I found orcs and elves too unreal to be interesting. That aversion to the fantasy genre has stayed with me. Doubtless it’s my loss. Maybe I’ll make up for it on the desert island: Tolkien is certainly long enough.

• Jonathan Freedland is the author of The Escape Artist: The Man Who Broke Out Of Auschwitz To Warn The World, shortlisted for the Rathbones Folio Prize.