Confessions Of A Book Traveller with Patrick Gale

Image: Dan Hall

ShelterBox book club text with banner including illustration of a book and mountains

We’ve been asking our bookish friends near and far for their reflection on years of literature based travel. Here’s Patrick Gale’s:

1. Which book character would you most like to live with?
Assuming he’s persuadable, Captain Wentworth from Persuasion.

2. Which book setting would you most like to travel to (real or fictional)?
If Gormenghast offers writers residencies, I’m up for that.

3. Which book ending do you wish you could change and how?
Anna Karenina. It’s cruel enough that she loses her children. Having her commit suicide, and so horribly, feels vindictive and misogynist. I’d like to see her learn from her terrible mistakes, move on and maybe start a new, independent life in Paris.

4. What’s your favourite book by a non-western author?
I love the Wind-up Bird Chronicle by Murakami and Sugar Street by Naguib Mahfouz.

5. Where is your reading spot?
Bed, these days. Or one of the many benches in our garden.

6. What is your all-time favourite book?
Impossible question, though Middlemarch and Persuasion are both pretty well perfect.

Patrick is currently working on a stage version of his incredible book Take Nothing With You

“I’ve been amazed at the response to Take Nothing With You. Turns out there are a lot of people out there who wish they had never stopped playing the instrument that transformed their life as a child!”