Shelf Life: Cityboy

Geraint Anderson still has an axe to grind. Filthy lucre is corrupting public life, and the City’s casino banks continue to spoil all who come near them. Their venality is the subject of his latest book, Payback Time – of which he wrote in these pages last week. He is this week’s Shelf Lifer. He tells us what he’s into (the Marquis de Sade) and what he’s not (Rick Santorum). He tweets @cityboylondon

1) What are you reading at the moment?

William Golding’s Lord of the Flies…again

2) As a child, what did you read under the covers?

See above as well as page 72 of James Herbert’s The Rats

3) Has a book ever made you cry, and if so which one?

No, but then I had two elder brothers so crying has never been an option

4) You are about to be put into solitary confinement for a year and allowed to take three books. What would you choose?

Tolstoy’s War and Peace (a weighty tome), Ulysses (maybe I’ll finally be able to finish it) and, of course, anything by Bear Grylls focusing on escape.

5) Which literary character would you most like to sleep with?

Helen of Troy … most of my ex-girlfriends only had faces that would launch a thousand quips.

6) If you could write a self-help book, what would you call it?

‘The seven habits of highly defective people’

7) Michael Gove has asked you to rewrite the GCSE English Literature syllabus. Which book, which play, and which poem would you make compulsory reading?

As I Lay Dying by William Faulkner
Death of a Salesman by Arthur Miller
Paradise Lost by John Milton (which is probably already there but deserves to remain so)

8) Which party from literature would you most like to have attended?

The Masque of the Red Death – incredibly lavish event that ends before the guests get boring

9) What would you title your memoirs?

That’s easy … Cityboy – Beer and loathing in the Square Mile

10) Which literary character do you dream of playing?

Rupert Campbell-Black in Jilly Cooper’s Riders seems to have a lot of fun