Ariel

"Ariel was the very first Penguin paperback book. On the cover, it says ‘The Bodley Head’: the first Penguins were published under the aegis of The Bodley Head because my father still worked for them at the time. It’s a fascinating book because it’s by a Frenchman—who obviously was a great Anglophile, but he was still a Frenchman—writing about a very English poet: Shelley. Percy Bysshe Shelley had this ghastly education that began with him going to Eton. It was the terrible kind of education schoolboys had in 1800. It is also about the rather sad love life that he had. He had a desire always to see the good in everything, and to make good things happen. He was always running out of money trying to improve the world his way. Shelley didn’t believe in any of the kind of things that society at that time believed in. For instance, he didn’t believe in marriage. And although he did get married—I think three times—two of them ended disastrously. “I imagine Shelley was a lovely man but at the same time really quite impossible.” Shelley had an idea that he could make people good, not by religion—he was very much against religion—but just by making them purer and less constrained by society. He struggled all his life to achieve this. I imagine Shelley was a lovely man but at the same time really quite impossible. It is also a novel that explores what England was like at the beginning of the nineteenth century. It’s an extraordinary book, very accessible. And still a good read today."