Charles Moore writing in The Spectator last week drew my attention to an 80th anniversary that had passed me by.
In August 1936 Heywood Hill opened. Conveniently for me it is in Curzon Street next door to Geo. F Trumper, that has been there since the 19th century. GFT is where I get my hair cut by Sadiq, although there’s not much for him to do these days.
Heywood Hill have devised an interesting competition to mark their birthday. You are invited to nominate a book published in English since 1936 which has “meant the most to you” and giving your reasons in no more than three words. Charles Moore chooses The Four Quartets by TS Eliot. His reasoning is “Now and England”.
To get you started let me give you a few ideas culled from Heywood Hill’s, Our Favourite Novels of the Past 200 Years.
1937: The Hobbit. 1938: The Code of the Woosters. 1939: The Big Sleep. 1945: Brideshead Revisited. 1948: Love in a Cold Climate. 1949: Nineteen Eighty-Four. 1951: The Catcher in the Rye. 1952: The Old Man & The Sea. 1954: Lord of the Flies. 1955: The Talented Mr Ripley. 1958: The Bell. 1960: To Kill a Mockingbird. 1961: Catch 22. 1963: The Collector. 1966: The Comedians. 1984: Empire of the Sun. 1985: The Handmaid’s Tale. 1989: The Remains of the Day. 1993: Birdsong.
First prize is a hardback book delivered to you every month for life. If I win I will have to build some new bookshelves. If you’d like to enter here is a link to the competition.
The HH website gives some inspiring entries made by writers, some of whom struggle to understand “no more than three words”.
Donna Leon chose A Suitable Boy by Vikram Seth – ‘It’s wonderfully funny’
Artemis Cooper chose A Time of Gifts by Patrick Leigh Fermor – ‘It glows with joy’
Edmund de Waal chose Broken Hierarchies: Poems 1952-2012 by Geoffrey Hill – ‘Homeric, Essential, Difficult’
Lucy Hughes-Hallett chose The Leopard by Giuseppe Tomasi di Lampedusa – ‘Best-ever literary death’
Julian Barnes chose The Beginning of Spring by Penelope Fitzgerald – ‘Her Best (by a Nose)’
William Boyd chose Pale Fire by Vladimir Nabokov – ‘Unique, Mind-Boggling, Hilarious’
Do enter and Jolly Good Luck. Luck is all you need as the winner will be drawn at random from all entries received by 31st October 2016.
My entry is The Code of the Woosters: larky, literary farce. If I win I’ll say thank you very much.