The Spectator

This week’s Bookbencher is Stewart Jackson, the Conservative MP for Peterborough. He tells us which Chilean communist poet he read recently, which children’s classic has stayed with him since childhood and which three books he would save from a burning British library. 1) Which books are at your bedside table at the moment? All Hell Let Loose by Max Hastings, The Thousand Autumns of Jacob de Zoet by David Mitchell and Cyber War by Richard A Clarke 2) Which book would you read to children? The Silver Sword by Ian Serraillier — published in 1956. I read it as a child and never forgot it! 3) Which literary character would you most like to be?

This week's Shelf Lifer is Richard Bean. The British playwright recently won joint best new play at the Evening Standard Theatre Awards last year for both One Man, Two Guvnors at the National and The Heretic at The Royal Court. He tells us what he used to read to spite his father, which character in Brighton Rock he would sleep with and which play he would put on the GCSE syllabus. 1) What are you reading at the moment? Chavs by Owen Jones The King's War by Miss C. V. Wedgewood (Both social history books. Play research, I hardly ever have the time to read novels.) 2) As a child, what did you read under the covers? On the Road by Jack Kerouac; The Fan Man by William Kotzwinkle Junior - basically drug and hippy literature, surreptitiously  'cause my dad was a policeman.

Robert and Edward Skidelsky have written a new book for our times, How Much Is Enough? The Love of Money, and the Case for the Good Life, which is published today. In their own words: ‘it is the story of… how we came to be ensnared by the dream of progress with purpose, riches without end.’ But what have this father son combination been reading while penning this and their other books? The answer is: rather more than just John Maynard Keynes. Robert Skidelsky 1) What are you reading at the moment? Laurent Binet, HHhH 2) As a child, what did you read under the covers? J.B.Priestley, The Good Companions Somerset Maugham, Of Human Bondage 3) Has a book ever made you cry, and if so which one? As a child, F.W. Farrar, Eric, or Little by Little — uncontrollably.

Journalist and former TV producer, Samantha Brick was recently castigated for her Daily Mail article suggesting that some might be intimidated by her good looks. But since we're always game at Shelf Life, we invited her to reveal which books she would read during solitary confinement, where she wouldn't like to find herself with Patrick Bateman and what she used to read under the covers. Samantha Brick has a personal website. 1) What are you reading at the moment? Lots of ex-pats-who-have-relocated-to-France type memoirs. I’ve just negotiated a deal to write my own warts’n’all version of living the French ‘dream’, so I thought I really ought to read the others in this genre too. My favourites so far are the Carol Drinkwater series, she writes exquisitely.