Style: January 13, 2021

Style | Read 57
What is a book people may be surprised to know you
have read?
On Chesil Beach [by Ian McEwan] – you will love it. It is
a very short book and 90 per cent of it takes place in a
24-hour period. It is just too wonderful – you must read
it, you must. It is one of my most recommended books
because it is so beautifully written, but I also like the fact
that it is so depressingly tragic. It is a very thoughtful book
and it is all about emotions and caring about people. I’m
sure people wouldn’t be surprised that I read an awful
lot of political literature, but they might be surprised that
I pick that as one of the best books I have ever read.
What is the first book you remember making a
connection with?
The Wind in the Willows [by Kenneth Grahame], which
at the time I didn’t realise was magnificent literature – I
just thought it was a brilliant story. I liked the aristocratic
nature of it, I liked the class system, which was very
odd because I was very much in the lower class, and
I liked that there was an aspirational aspect to it.
Would your English teacher at school be surprised to
learn you’ve just written your third book?
They would be surprised that I mastered reading. I was
hopelessly dyslexic – I would not have gone in the year
book as the ‘most likely to write three bestsellers’. There
was this teacher I had in Bristol, I wish I could remember his
name, I liked the way he had spindly fingers and I remember
loving the way he used to hold a book – his fingers
betrayed the fact he loved books. He had spectacles, not
glasses, and they used to slip down his nose and, to push
them up his nose, he would rest his finger at the end of his
nose and push his head down rather than the most obvious
way of doing it. Annoying I can’t remember his name.
If you had the power to make every politician read one
book, what would it be?
I don’t even know that I could be bothered. I literally don’t
know if I could be bothered. I think we have an unhealthy
obsession with our politicians rather than with our politics,
you know? We personalise our politics too much and you
know that plays so much into their hands. They are public
servants and they should be judged on how well they
serve us and not on their personalities or other things.
What is a book you remember reading to your children?
Mostly I would just make up stories. Fairy tales, adventure
stories, things like that. Stories that were linked in some
way to the games they would play, or stories that involved
three girls living in an old house. That was the thing for
me – broadening imaginative horizons. I always told
them that to be broad of vision was more important
than to excel academically. I’ve got this belief that the
quality of a parent is on how long the magic remains alive
in their children – how long their children experience
childhood. And the most abusive parents are those
who hurry their children through childhood as quickly
as possible because the parents have got things to be
getting on with, you know? So I think anything you can do
to broaden their imagination and their view, not of your
world but their own world, just keeps the magic alive.
The book you would most recommend?
I love this book the most: We Were Liars [by E.
Lockhart]. It is beautifully written, but not just that, it
is wonderfully constructed. You know there is a twist
coming and the twist almost comes several times, so it
gives you an opportunity to prophesise what the twist
is going to be, but you can never truly imagine how
dramatically misled you have been. Beautifully misled,
willingly misled. This is a book you should own yourself
and buy several copies to give to people you love.
Now, give us a shameless plug for your book I’m In a
United State – why will we love it?
It is beautifully honest, but I think people will be surprised.
It is both fabulously shallow and fabulously deep.
ABOVE: Paul with his daughter Bella at the Palm Springs gateway.