The Spectator

Editor-in-chief of The Lady, judge of the inaugural Hatchet Job of the Year Award, author of Shire Hell and a keen skier, Rachel Johnson is this week's Shelf Lifer. She has eminently sensible suggestions for the English curriculum, reveals the guilty literary secrets of the Johnson dynasty and tells us about the downside of having a famous brother. 1) What are you reading at the moment? The Golden Notebook by Doris Lessing, The Forgotten Waltz by Anne Enright, Frances Osborne's Park Lane, just finished Philip Gould's When I Die. Off the record - Fifty Shades of Grey. 2) As a child, what did you read under the covers? Enid Blyton.

When an unpublished diary or book of letters from a celebrated writer comes to the attention of the reading public nowadays, there is often a sense that a game is being played between two parties. Writers — being the megalomaniacs they invariably are — dream of grandiosity and world domination, therefore these documents are predominately contrived from the moment pen goes to paper. They are for potential posterity, and a legacy, rather than any truthful insights. The readers readily take part in this charade, hoping to catch their idols off guard in the process.