"Best-selling Oxford author Philip Pullman has raided his bookshelves to pick 40 of his favourite titles to recommend to the nation. (...)
Mr Pullman, who lives outside Oxford said: "It was great fun choosing these books and it was hard to limit myself to 40 - I could have picked 400 or 4,000. But there was enough room for a bit of variety, including children's books, funny books, poetry - a real selection. I tried to avoid including the obvious choices such as Hamlet, and I didn't bother with Paradise Lost because I know that by heart. It took me a lifetime to put this collection together. I've still got copies of most of them."
Mr Pullman's said his favourite is probably Robert Burton's The Anatomy of Melancholy, "an immensely, funny book about depression written in a very prolix, ornate style". "
