There were about two or three hundred books that I needed to own, own as objects and a kind of autobiography: the books that had influenced my life or summed up a phase of it. Orwell, Milan Kundera, Philip Larkin’s poems, Kenneth Tynan’s theatre writings, Martha Gellhorn’s war-reporting, Colin Thubron’s books on Russia, and so on. As I’ve narrowed my collection down to one large book-case finally I can see these titles clearly again. The composer Dmitri Shostakovich (whose biography I’ve kept) said when it came to literature you should know less but know it back to front. Shostakovich, I think, was right.