Emma Thompson's Reading List

"“Wolf Hall,” by Hilary Mantel. It was a marvel."

"“A Strange Eventful History,” by Michael Holroyd, because it’s so interesting about the discipline of acting."

"“King Lear.” The most humane portrait of the human condition I know."

"The prime minister might revisit Geoffrey Willans’s “Molesworth,” which is so illuminating about the character and habits of little boys."

"I was on holiday years ago with “Corelli’s Mandolin.” Rendered inconsolable and had to be put to bed for the afternoon."

"All of Joan Aiken, Alan Garner, Leon Garfield and John Masefield. In particular — “The Wolves of Willoughby Chase” (Aiken), “The Weirdstone of Brisingamen” (Garner), “The Box of Delights” (Masefield) and “The Strange Affair of Adelaide Harris” (Garfield)."

"“The Weirdstone of Brisingamen” (Garner)."

"“The Box of Delights” (Masefield)."

"“The Strange Affair of Adelaide Harris” (Garfield)."

"I had my heart broken for the first time when I was 16. My mother gave me “War and Peace,” which, in three volumes, soaked up a lot of the tears."

"I love “Remains of the Day” — Ruth Prawer Jhabvala adapted Ishiguro’s book so brilliantly that both film and book lose nothing and gain so much."

"“Sense and Sensibility” must take precedence because there’s nothing to compare to the experience of acting something you’ve spent five years adapting whilst convinced that it will never be made."

"I’ve plumped for Barnaby Rudge since I’ve been in love with him for 35 years and he could just as easily be played by a girl as a boy. I’d like to explore my inner idiot."

"I’ve rediscovered this book because I’ve been reading it to my daughter. It’s fantastically unpleasant, involving, as it does, the kidnapping of baby rabbits with a view to eating them. The rabbits who go to rescue the bunnies at Mr. Tod’s sit at the back of the house as the sun goes down with all these unpleasant things, like rabbit skulls, lying around. They’re in a dreadful place, in the heart of enemy country. Reading it as an adult is a great treat, but looking back, I see that it starte..."

"When I was 10 years old, my grandfather gave me the complete works of Doyle, so I grew up passionate about Sherlock Holmes. Through these books— The Valley of Fear is one of his lesser-known novels—I became hooked on narrative. And Doyle was spooky. He led me to the ghost stories of M.R. James, as well as the Brontës, Austen, Trollope, all the great Victorians. But I do remember Sherlock Holmes was my great comfort. I used to get tonsillitis until I had my tonsils taken out. After which, of c..."

"My third choice, which covers my years from 14 to 21, was a tricky one. I remember where I was when I read it: in my father’s study, in a big chair, with my jaw on my lap. At that stage, I was steeped in Victorian culture (I suppose my greatest pleasures were George Eliot and Jane Austen more than almost anyone else). However, I’ve always been fascinated and inspired by otherness and by the forbidden and, in the case of Naked Lunch , by deviance. I remember in particular a scene where a naked..."

"Woolf wrote this after receiving requests for one guinea from three charitable organizations. It’s largely about education—women’s education—and the fact that it really wasn’t believed in. Woolf’s position was that it was important, and that’s become central to feminist thinking. Reading the book gave me the feeling that higher education sometimes stifled questions, and that the best type of instruction makes you able to ask the right questions and to continue asking those questions for the r..."

"This is about the 1994 massacre in Rwanda. It’s the response of a profoundly civilized man to one of the largest and least talked about genocides of the last century. I’ve always been interested in human rights, and Keane presents very simply the way in which human beings make it possible for other human beings to be massacred on a large scale."

"When I was 35–42-years old, my husband, Greg Wise, found me in a gloomy state, having researched an awful lot of gloomy subjects, including the catastrophes in Chile and El Salvador and the uglier aspects of our natures. He insisted I read Milligan’s autobiographical memoirs of World War II. I put this book in because it made me laugh till I was nearly sick. It’s a fantastic portrait of the culture of war and a great cure for too much information."

"With my last book, I’ve gone back to narrative. This is the best story I’ve read in the past few years. I came across it because I was about to play an angel in Mike Nichols’s adaptation of Angels in America , and I bought everything I could find on that topic. This is the story of a man who finds an angel in his vineyard and who meets the angel every year on the same night for the rest of his life. It’s about their discoveries over time, and in the end, it’s a quite extraordinary portrait of..."