Desert Island Books

How to choose only eight books for company? And to appeal to every mood? I decided my choices should be like encountering old friends, not seen for a while, but never forgotten, and always a pleasure to meet again. Books I enjoyed years ago, and would like to reread, if my current ‘to be read’ pile was not already teetering out of control. There is one exception to this, last read as recently as 2019, while on a trip to Bath for a Significant Birthday. 

Le Morte d’ Arthur by Sir Thomas Malory (originally published by William Caxton 1485 but I have a newer and more accessible Penguin edition given to me in 1985!)

I love a quest. The legends of King Arthur, Guinevere, Camelot, Tintagel, and the Knights of the Round Table have fascinated me for years. I have a whole bookcase dedicated to the Arthurian legends, from novels reimagining stories from Le Morte d’ Arthur to non-fiction texts investigating the people and places which may have inspired the legend. Secretly, I love to believe that the ‘Once and Future King’ is not just a legend…

Persuasion by Jane Austen (1817)

I cannot imagine being stranded anywhere without Jane Austen, let alone on what I have decided will be the most idyllic of desert islands. Persuasion, published posthumously, introduces a mature heroine, quiet, thoughtful, reserved, yet good in a crisis. Anne Elliot has lost her ‘bloom’, along with her chance of happiness, having been persuaded to reject a penniless but ambitious naval officer when she was nineteen. The story begins in the ‘sweet’ and ‘sad’ autumnal months, which reflect the gentle melancholy of Anne’s situation. Constancy in love is rewarded by a second chance of happiness and fulfilment. Captain Wentworth’s proposal is one of the most beautiful love letters in literature.

Barchester Towers by Anthony Trollope (1857)

Anthony Trollope treats his reader as an ally, inviting them into the process of storytelling, sharing his observations on the fortunes and foibles of his characters. He was an astute and often irreverent observer of Victorian society, portraying the small humiliations and petty triumphs of social and political manoeuvring with wit and empathy. Narrowing his work to just one, I would have to choose the ecclesiastical power struggle in Barchester Towers. The tyrannical, scheming Bishop’s wife Mrs Proudie ranks among Trollope’s greatest creations. 

Cold Comfort Farm by Stella Gibbons (1932) 

Orphan Flora Poste arrives at the aptly named Cold Comfort Farm in rural Sussex to live with her relatives, the gloomy and dysfunctional Starkadder family, a glorious collection of characters headed by matriarch Aunt Ada Doom who once ‘saw something nasty in the woodshed’.  Flora takes it upon herself to improve their lives. Wonderful and witty. 

The Go-Between by L. P. Hartley (1953)

A brutal yet beautiful coming-of-age story. Naïve, sensitive Leo Colston is invited to spend the summer holiday with a wealthy school friend. An Edwardian schoolboy idyll of sunshine and cricket and afternoon teas is eroded by Leo’s awareness of his social inferiority and his uneasy introduction to a world of adult secrets and deception. The often-quoted opening line is magnificent.

Possession by A. S. Byatt (1990)

Set both in the present day and the nineteenth century, Possession is simultaneously a love story, a historical romance, a literary detective story and a satire on academia. Roland Mitchell is an academic researching the Victorian poet Randolph Henry Ash. Maud Bailey is a scholar researching the life and work of her distant relative, a little-known poet named Christabel LaMotte. They find evidence of a previously unknown connection between the two poets. Following a trail of clues from letters and journals, and in a race against rival colleagues, Mitchell and Bailey collaborate to uncover the truth about Ash and LaMotte's relationship. 

From one literary mystery to another.

Have his Carcase by Dorothy M. Sayers (1932)

My desert island library would not be complete without an entry from the Golden Age of mystery writing. Lord Peter Wimsey, aristocratic amateur detective and detective novelist and Harriet Vane investigate. Harriet discovers the body of a man lying on an isolated rock on the shore. His throat has been recently cut. There are no footprints in the sand other than those of the victim, and Harriet herself. Unfortunately, the corpse is washed away by the rising tide before she can summon help. 

Even the best of desert islands might begin to feel a little too quiet. Reading my final choice, originally written in instalments, is like talking to a friend who says exactly what you are thinking, only so much more eloquently and amusingly.

The Diary of a Provincial Lady by E. M. Delafield (1930)

Written in diary form, E. M. Delafield celebrates Englishness and the ordinary. The Provincial Lady is observant, self-deprecating, unsentimental, understated and makes well-judged use of Capital Letters. She offers readers a glimpse of middle class, domestic life in England in the period between the two World Wars, transforming the small and familiar dullness of everyday life into laughter.

If I had to choose an additional luxury item it would be tiny nonpareilles capers! 

Anya Page