The Best of Books and Company

Foreword / [by Susan Hill] --A roof of one's own / Jeanette Winterson --Why do we read? / Alain de Boton --How I discovered books / Roger Scruton --Could we see some identification, please? / Sophie Hannah --De-accessioning / Penelope Lively --Visiting the store-room / Francis King --Learning to read, Yorkshire 1928 / Kit Pyman --O, the books of my youth! / Juliet Nicolson --Corpses in the quad : the curious case of Oxbridge crime / Andrew Taylor --P.C. Plod apprehended / Andrew Taylor --The country of the pointed firs / Penelope Fitzgerald --The Brontë sisters / Lucasta Miller --William Maxwell : writer of unmissable novels /Adèle Geras --Enjoying Scott / W.E.K. Anderson --Left hand, right hand! revisited / Philip Ziegler --Re-reading David Copperfield / William Trevor --The happy priest / Jane Gardam --Lilias Rider Haggard / Patricia Cleveland-Peck --J.L. Carr's A month in the country / Penelope Fitzgerald --Rooms of their own / Margaret de Fonblanque --Our writers / Ronald Blythe --The ghost stories of M.R. James / John Francis --An inheritance / Philip Hensher --The man on the number 46 bus / Nick Harkaway --Coming in from the outside / Inga-Stina Ewbank.