Our critics’ pick their favourite books from comedy classics to rip-roaring thrillers

If you’re stuck in the house, use the time to catch up on some great books that will let you escape to another world. 

We asked bestselling novelist Joanna Trollope and the Daily Mail’s team of literary critics to choose their favourite reads to lift your spirits… 

These books to warm the heart were picked by Joanna Trollope, pictured above

Books to warm the heart

Picked by Joanna Trollope 

Esprit de Corps by Lawrence Durrell 

Yes, he was played (beautifully) by Josh O’Connor in The Durrells on ITV. 

He was a writer, wildly popular in the 1960s (The Alexandria Quartet, Bitter Lemons, Justine) and he wrote these sketches of diplomatic life in 1957. 

They are sophisticated funny, but wonderful, and bonkers. 

The First Man in Rome by Colleen McCullough 

Remember The Thorn Birds? 

Well, this was written by the same woman. She was actually a serious academic, a doctor of neurophysiology, but she also wrote lyrics for musicals as well as international bestsellers. 

This novel is set in Rome in 110BC, and follows the lives of two ambitious men, Gaius Marius and Lucius Cornelius Sulla in and out of palaces, battlefields, tenements and bedrooms. It’s enormous — and gossipy. 

The Sheltering Desert by Henno Martin 

One for the man in your life. It’s the account of two senior scientists in South Africa, who were desperate to evade call-up in 1939, and fled to the Namib Desert to hide. 

They survived for two whole years with nothing but a dog for company — and this is the story of how they managed it, especially psychologically. 

Ghost Wall by Sarah Moss 

Brilliant. Gripping. 

Very thought provoking. It’ll take you two hours. 

Middlemarch by George Eliot 

If not now, when…? 

It’s fantastic anyway, probably the best study of human nature you will ever read, middle-class people in the middle of 19th century and in the middle of England. 

I dare you to pick it up… 

Mum & Dad by Joanna Trollope is published by Macmillan priced £18.99 hardback and available now.

Five escapist reads

Sandra Parsons, Literary Editor 

The Way We Live Now by Anthony Trollope 

A doorstep of a Victorian novel to lose yourself in. It teems with all human life, most gloriously with the monstrous Augustus Melmotte, a financier who is corrupt, greedy and totally unscrupulous. 

Yet when he arrives in London, high society falls over itself to accommodate him. A satirical delight. 

Mapp and Lucia by E.F. Benson 

Mrs Emmeline Lucas (Lucia to her friends) arrives in the village of Tilling and attempts to de-throne its society queen, Miss Elizabeth Mapp. Sheer joy. 

WolfHall, Bring Up The Bodies, The Mirror and The Light by Hilary Mantel 

Impossible to single out just one of these. Being stuck at home gives you enough time to get over the hump of her confusing use of ‘he’ which is both the trilogy’s hallmark and its only irritant. 

Leave the miseries of the coronavirus behind and immerse yourself instead in the far more terrifying world of Tudor England, in which, against you all odds, you will find yourself falling head over heels for Thomas Cromwell. 

Jane and Prudence by Barbara Pym 

If you haven’t read Barbara Pym, start now — she is one of the funniest, most acute observers of human behaviour ever, and her descriptions of life in post-war England are beyond brilliant. 

Jane is a vicar’s wife trying to find her friend Prudence a husband. That Prudence has fallen for her ugly, arrogant boss doesn’t help. 

Changing Places by David Lodge

As none of us can travel, revel in the descriptions of what it was like to fly transatlantic in the 70s. 

Modest and underachieving British academic Philip Swallow leaves the British redbrick university where he teaches in the Midlands to swap lives and jobs with the high-achieving — and even more highly sexed — American Professor Maurice Zapp. Fabulously funny.

Wendy Holden, above, picked out these books for much-needed laughter

Wendy Holden, above, picked out these books for much-needed laughter

Much needed laughter  

Wendy Holden 

Tamara Drewe by Posy Simmonds 

I love graphic novels and those by Posy are the best in the West. She mercilessly skewers middleclass pretension, especially the literary sort. 

Tamara Drewe is her updated version of Far From The Madding Crowd, set in a writer’s retreat in Gloucestershire. 

Cold Comfort Farm by Stella Gibbons 

Just writing the title makes me laugh. This genius send-up of rural archetypes has never been equalled. 

Sensible Flora leaves London to live with her rellies in the country. They include wildeyed cousin Judith, smouldering Seth and (most famously) Aunt Ada Doom who once saw something nasty in the woodshed. Can Flora sort everyone out and bring order to the crazed scene? 

The Lost Diaries of Adrian Mole by Sue Townsend 

Sue Townsend’s Adrian Mole books are some of the funniest ever written. In this one he’s been promised a council house on the understanding that the current occupant, Mrs Wormington, 97 years old and in hospital, is not expected to live much longer. You’ve guessed it; she ends up moving in with Adrian. 

The Serial by Cyra McFadden

This tale of hipsters in Seventies California was written in 1977 but it could be Shoreditch now. 

Harvey and Kate are having marriage problems, but the real subject is their self-consciously trendy lifestyle. 

Nothing escapes ­McFadden’s gleefully satirical eye. In Search of Lost Time by Marcel Proust You’ve always meant to read it. 

What better time to plunge into the bitchy, satirical world of early 1900s Parisian high society? Believe it or not, a lot of it is funny. 

Wendy Holden’s new novel, The Governess, will be out in July. 

Twisting thrillers 

Geoffrey Wansell 

A Study in Scarlet by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. 

In testing times, it is always worth returning to old favourites. So yesterday I bought a new copy of this — Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s first story about Sherlock Holmes. 

It is as fresh and exciting as it was when it was first published in 1887, and it reveals the extraordinary relationship between Dr Watson and the idiosyncratic detective quite beautifully. 

Last Car to Elysian Fields by James Lee Burke 

Another writer I always return to is the marvellous James Lee Burke, revelling once again in his depiction of the bayou in New Iberia, and the corruption that haunts his life. 

I have always admired this one, but almost any Burke will do. 

Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy by John le Carre 

No bookcase is complete without John le Carre, and rereading his novels just makes them better, especially Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy, which still grips like a stealthy python even if you remember who the traitor is. 

Spook Street by Mick Herron 

New kid on the British spy block, Mick Herron, just keeps getting better and better — closer and closer to the intricacies of Graham Greene, but with a touch of wry humour thrown in. 

I particularly like this, but almost any one of his novels about spies on the scrapheap — slow horses as he calls them — will do. 

Three Hours by Rosamund Lupton

This is unquestionably the finest new thriller so far this year. A sensational depiction of a school under siege in rural Somerset during a violent winter snow storm, it is breathtakingly good. 

Flights of fantasy 

Jamie Buxton 

That Hideous Strength by C.S.Lewis 

In this utterly bonkers conclusion to his under-read sci-fi trilogy, the master lands back on earth with a gripping mishmash of dark esotericism, Arthurian myth, paranoid thriller, with space-angels to boot. 

Can merry olde England be saved from the grim forces of rationality? Better call Merlin! 

Fever Dream by George R. R. Martin

Before Game of Thrones, George R.R. Martin ventured into Southern Gothic territory with an immersive tale of Mississippi riverboats, blind ambition and…vampires. It’s Abner Marsh’s dream to build the finest paddleboat on the river but there’s something about his business partner that doesn’t quite add up. 

The Left Hand of Darkness by Ursula Le Guin 

‘The King was pregnant’ Le Guin wrote in 1969, and sci-fi changed forever. Genly Ai is trying to coax the nations of a rogue planet to join a galactic confederacy. 

Through his humane eyes, Le Guin explores new territories of gender, politics and friendship with anthropological intelligence. 

Monkey Planet (Planet of the Apes) by Pierre Boulle

Boule’s lost classic forms the template of the famous films, but he gives us a more thoughtful, philosophical take. Fun fact: the reclusive Boule also wrote Bridge on the River Kwai.

Stephen Fry will read aloud while your iron

Talking books are not new, but they can be expensive (about £20 each), or you have to rely on whatever you can borrow from a library. 

The app Audible is now heaven sent as it has a massive, ever-growing catalogue of books read by actors or the author. 

Signing up is easy: go to audible.co.uk to register and give card details. There’s a 30-day free trial, then for £7.99 per month you get one monthly ‘credit’ for a book (or two for £14.99). 

Keen ‘readers’ can boost their credits (£17 buys three extra books) and membership provides free podcasts.

Your recordings instantly appear on your device. You get the full book immersion experience while you’re busy doing other things — you can have Clare Balding or Stephen Fry chatting in your ear while you’re ironing, or Tom Hanks narrating a riveting novel while you potter around the garden. 

A talking book is the perfect bedtime wind-down, and if you sync your phone with the Bluetooth in your car, the story will pick up where you left off, the moment you start the engine.

Brush up on sink sonnets with Gyles Brandreth 

The Government’s suggestion was to get your timing right by singing Happy Birthday — twice. Then, they asked me and Dame Judi Dench

The Government’s suggestion was to get your timing right by singing Happy Birthday — twice. Then, they asked me and Dame Judi Dench

When it comes to washing your hands to keep Covid-19 at bay, the rules are simple: you need to keep going for 20 seconds.

The Government’s suggestion was to get your timing right by singing Happy Birthday — twice. Then, they asked me and Dame Judi Dench. 

We settled on The Owl And The Pussy-Cat, recording it in Dame Judi’s kitchen. 

Now we are back safely in our own homes, we have decided to learn some more poems. Here are a few of our favourites for you to recite. 

Each one lasts 20 seconds. Get the soap, turn on the tap, lather up — and enjoy! 

The Tyger by William Blake (1757-1827) 

Tyger Tyger, burning bright, 

In the forests of the night; 

What immortal hand or eye, 

Could frame thy fearful symmetry? 

In what distant deeps or skies. 

Burnt the fire of thine eyes? On what wings dare he aspire? 

What the hand, dare seize the fire? 

Home-Thoughts, From Abroad by Robert Browning (1812-89) 

Oh, to be in England 

Now that April’s there, 

And whoever wakes in England 

Sees, some morning, unaware, 

That the lowest boughs and the brushwood sheaf 

Round the elm-tree bole are in tiny leaf, 

While the chaffinch sings on the orchard bough In England — now! 

Leisure by William Henry Davies (1871-1940) 

What is this life if, full of care, 

We have no time to stand and stare.

No time to stand beneath the boughs

And stare as long as sheep or cows. 

No time to see, when woods we pass,

Where squirrels hide their nuts in grass.

No time to see, in broad daylight,

Streams full of stars, like skies at night.

No time to turn at Beauty’s glance,

And watch her feet, how they can dance.

Gyles Brandreth’s anthology of poetry, ­Dancing By The Light Of The Moon, is published by Penguin Michael Joseph.

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