How did you zero in on these books and their writers? Many names would have been left behind...
There was no question of zeroing in. My book is about novels, plays and non-fiction that have been with me as companions, friends and guides for decades. Yes, there are many more that I would have included were I writing two or three volumes rather than one. [Charles] Dickens, for instance, and DH Lawrence, Joseph Conrad, Ernest Hemingway, Iris Murdoch, Doris Lessing… The book ends with a regretful nod to them. The book has a tight narrative that also helped me decide which books were in and which had to be out.

Your favourite moments while re-reading these books…
Discovering that some characters remained as difficult to understand on second and third reading as they were on the first; recognising my growth when I recalled my reception of them when I read them first, probably as a teenager, then as a mature woman and now as an elderly woman. Almost liking a character that I had been impatient with as a young woman — Jane Austen’s Emma — because I now understood better what Austen as a writer of her times was trying to do in creating this heroine. Many precious moments involved how vividly I remembered my favourite passages from books I had not read for 20 or 30 years and to re-experience the delight they had offered me then. The best thing about writing the book was the years it helped me spend with them. It was like an unending party with friends.