Andrea Levy at Stoke Newington Bookshop

I was delighted to hear that Andrea Levy has won the Walter Scott prize for The Long Song - read about it here. I had quite an Andrea Levy week last week. Not only was she on BBC Radio 4’s Desert Island Discs selecting her favourite records and talking about her life. You can listen to the radio programme here: Andrea/Desert Island Discs.

If you don’t want to listen to it again, you should at least know Andrea selected as her book a Roget’s Thesaurus. Truly a born writer.  She chose for her luxury item the very sensible mosquito repellent. I would have never have thought of that, but that is definitely my kind of desert Island that she’s heading off too.  I am always taken by surprise when ‘the castaways’ vision of the desert island is wet and windswept.

The programme airs on Sunday mornings, and I was also able to listen to the repeat on the following Friday morning. I loved the way that she ended the programme by saying to the presenter, Kirstie Young – “Thank you - A lifelong ambition achieved.”

By sheer coincidence on the day after the radio broadcast Andrea was at Stoke Newington Bookshop where in homage to the long-running radio programme she selected six books and a record. The organisers warm up by getting the audience to hum the theme tune to the radio programme and one of the regular guests pretends to be the seagull. Only in north London!   

Here are Andrea Levy’s favourite books:

1.    Jane Eyre Charlotte Bronte: This was on Andrea’s list because she said "It was the one I came most close to actually finishing." She read it for her English Literature A Level and believes that she passed the exam through the reading/crib notes.

2.    The Women’s Room Marilyn French: On the copy that Andrea it said "... this book changes lives." Andrea now says that it made her a feminist.

3.    I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings Maya Angelou: Andrea loved the way that this book was written in the way that Maya spoke and came from the heart. This book made Andrea feel that she could write about her life, there was nothing about being Black British and that’s how she found her voice.

4.    Going to Meet the Man James Baldwin: Reading this short story changed Andrea’s view of fiction. It’s a short story about a lynching - "it completely enters you and goes to another place – straight through the heart."

5.    Encyclopaedia of Jamaican Heritage Olive Senior: Andrea described how here writing life developed in tandem with learning about her heritage. She explained that in America you cannot talk about American history without mentioning slavery. Here you could write a whole book with it being mentioned. This book is a good one for research and the reading was about the history of Jerk Pork.

6.    The Remains of the Day, Kazuo  Ishiguro: Andrea is regularly asked “What do you read?” or “What’s your favourite book?” This is her perfect book. A story about what the human being is going through, while at the same time the much bigger story. It inspires her into wanting to make beautiful work.  The actress reading Andrea’s selection cried at the end this reading, it was a very emotional piece.

Carrying on the reverse theme of Desert Island Discs, Andrea was asked to select a record. She described that she’d had to leave a record out of her selection for the radio programme and was disappointed that she'd had no Tamla Motown. So she chose this because at school disco’s when boys did not ask you to dance, this was the record that she could always dance to on her own. The Tears of a Clown, Smokey Robinson & The Miracles.

Andrea Levy, a glass of wine, in lovely company and in a very good bookshop – all for £2.50 – an absolute bargain! Loved it.