We asked our Felixstowe Book Festival patrons Esther Freud, Sir Terry Waite KCMG CBE and Robin Ince, and festival chair Meg Reid, which books they’ll be reading and buying for family and friends this Christmas – and hoping to receive!
ESTHER FREUD
Which book would you like to receive this Christmas?
I have asked for Sally Rooney’s Intermezzo. I’m curious to see how she’s developing her talent and her voice.
Which book would you give others at Christmas?
The book I give really depends on the person receiving it, and I make notes through the year. Our Evenings by Alan Hollinghurst, or books for the children in my life: Hannah Gold’s Turtle Moon and Katherine Rundell’s Impossible Creatures.
Is there a book you love to re-read at Christmas?
I’m not a great re-reader – too many new books. But if I had to choose, it would be A Winter Book by Tove Jansson.
SIR TERRY WAITE KCMG CBE
Which book would you like to receive this Christmas?
Fyodor Dostoyevsky had a profound understanding of the working of the mind. Although I have read most of his works, I could easily re-read any one of them. Crime And Punishment is one of his finest writings.
Which book would you give others at Christmas?
The two volumes entitled The Matter With Things by Iain McGilchrist. Oddly titled, but a fascinating study of the brain and how contemporary life is being shaped by over-concentration on the left hemisphere.
Is there a book you love to re-read at Christmas?
Anything by Charles Dickens to remind me of Christmas as it was in Victorian times
ROBIN INCE
Which book would you like to receive this Christmas?
My dream Christmas book is Practically True by Ernest Thesiger, an actor and embroiderer best remembered now for [the 1935 film] Bride Of Frankenstein. It is a delightfully catty book, full of wit, but it is very hard to find. I have held a copy in Exeter Library. My guess on its rarity is that anyone mentioned in it would buy every copy they could find and burn it.
Which book would you give others at Christmas?
I will give Alexis Pauline Gumbs’ Survival Is A Promise, a biography of Audre Lorde. Boy oh boy, does it fizz and spark and inspire. In these bleak times, with the far right gaining immense power, hearing a voice of poetry and passion like Lorde’s fed through the mind of Gumbs, a great poet herself, is just the dynamite we need.
Is there a book you love to re-read at Christmas?
I am going to re-read the first short story collection by Camilla Grudova, The Doll’s Alphabet. Her imagination was where my year began and I will return to it to end my year.
MEG REID
Which book would you like to receive this Christmas?
Long Live Great Bardfield, the autobiography of Tirzah Garwood. I find Garfield’s paintings and woodcuts completely captivating and I want to know how she managed an artistic life despite domestic constraints. It’s a bonus that it is published in the elegant Persephone Books edition.
Which book would you give others at Christmas?
I love to give the latest in any series my 11-year-old granddaughter is reading. She always wants me to read them after her, and I know I will enjoy them. The latest is the Crookhaven The School For Thieves series by JJ Arcanjo, which are as thrilling as any adult thriller.
Is there a book you love to re-read at Christmas?
Christmas At Timothy’s by Gee Denes, the story of a girl, Jennifer, visiting her cousins for Christmas. Buying presents, shopping in a pea soup fog, choosing the tree, putting up paper chains, all on Christmas Eve. It’s a reminder of my 1950s childhood and long-ago Christmases.
We would love to hear about the books you plan to give, re-read and hope to receive this Christmas, too – please share with us!