Robinson Crusoe

Daniel Defoe

I must admit that my introduction to literature as a boy was courtesy of Classics Illustrated comics. Before reading Defoe's 1719 tale of a castaway, the only actual book I had read was Biggles Takes a Holiday. Defoe's novel, which many believed to be a true account when first published, gave me a taste for realistic fiction, which would lead to a lifelong interest in historical non-fiction – real ripping yarns.

Animal Farm

George Orwell

I read this book under sufferance. It being a prescribed text at school, I naturally assumed it would be dull, colourless and boring. It was nothing of the sort. Orwell's 1945 story of a farmyard revolution and its aftermath is the first book I found emotionally engaging, and there is no better introduction to allegory and political satire.

Confederates

Tom Keneally

A friend lent me Keneally's 1979 tale of the American Civil War – fortunately for me but not so for him because I never returned it. Confederates was the first novel set in those times I had read since Stephen Crane's The Red Badge of Courage, many years earlier. It impressed me with its depth and scope, and the human dimension it brought to that terrible conflict, and rekindled my interest in the subject.

The Age of Paradox

John W. Dodds

Allegedly I liberated this moth-eaten tome from a library doomed by digital depredations. Subtitled A Biography of England 1841-1851, this portrait of a decade of social and political upheaval is described by its author as a "voyage through strange seas of thought". By unpicking the threads of history's tapestry, The Age of Paradox proved to me that truth is indeed stranger than fiction.