The Stand by Stephen King: I read this once a year, at least. King’s best book, raising all kinds of questions about Good and Evil, the nature of society, the best and worst of humanity - the characters are so beautifully drawn, I feel as if I know each one personally now. The underlying theme - what do you believe? What do you hold sacred? Would you take a stand? Powerful stuff.

Nigella Express: My favourite cook book at the moment. I love the succulent way Nigella writes about food. Even her recipes-in-a-hurry dally over the sheer pleasure of cooking and eating. My son in law, the Filipino chef bought it for me as a spur of the moment gift, so it is doubly treasured.

Roget’s Thesaurus: A very old, battered Penguin paperback edition.

The Prester Quest by Nicholas Jubber: I’m reading this now. It’s the hilarious account of Jubber’s quest to walk in the footsteps of a medieval priest charged with finding the mysterious (and non existent) Kingdom of Prester John, somewhere in Africa.

Ghosts of Vesuvius: Charles Pellegrino’s rivetting comparison of the destruction of the twin towers and other major disasters, such as the sinking of the Titanic and the eruption of Mt Vesuvius. I found it incredibly moving; when Pellgrino and his fellow workers returned to Pompeii after sifting through Ground Zero to study the damage and compare it to Vesuvius (the effects were the same, so investigators were hoping to save lives in future events of this type, including volcanic eruptions) their attitude had changed dramatically. Pompeii was no longer a historical event but an intensely human one. For the first time, these pragmatic scientists `contaminated’ a site by leaving memorials for the long dead - such as a doll, from `the childen of New York to the Children of Pompeii’ (because one of the bodies found at Pompeii is a small girl child clutching a doll.) A most beautifully written book - I highly reccomend it.