Building on his Observer series (edited versions were published in the paper, whereas the full commentaries are featured here), McCrum offers his analyses of a host of the finest examples of the novel written in English (cut-off point: the millennium). The expected classics, including Gulliver’s Travels, Frankenstein, Emma, The Golden Bowl and Moby-Dick, sit alongside less well-known gems such as Elizabeth Taylor’s Mrs Palfrey at the Claremont and Sylvia Townsend Warner’s Lolly Willowes. Sometimes, McCrum simply has to trust his own instinct when it comes to picking a single title from a prolific author’s catalogue – David Copperfield winning out (incidentally Dickens’s own “favourite child” and a hit with Freud too) where the Victorian master storyteller is concerned. There are omissions of course – no list would be complete without them – but overall it’s a delightful insight into both the history of the genre and one man’s lifelong love affair with fiction.

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