I thought, first of all, that it was going to be all about Becky Sharp. I embarked on Vanity Fair full of preconceptions. Like many slow writers I’m a slow reader, and disagree entirely with the recent item in the ‘Wit and Wisdom’ section of The Week which said, ‘He has only truly learned the art of reading who has mastered the art of skipping and skimming.’ As far as I’m concerned, he has only learned the true art of reading who reads and savours every sentence, at least once and ‘Come, children, let us shut up the box and the puppets, for our play is played out.’ Reading it took over three weeks of bedtimes and early mornings. Kirsty Young would never make such an incisive rejoinder as ‘Not Middlemarch?’). And so, I think, are many people, judging by the honest responses I’ve had from highly educated friends who have admitted to steering clear of it all their lives. How many of us, on hearing that snatch of conversation on Desert Island Discs in 2006, thought, ‘Well, I’d better get round to reading Vanity Fair, then.’ I did, but it still took me another five years. And you don’t feel lectured in the same way that you do with George Eliot.’ John Sutherland: ‘I’d take Vanity Fair, which I think is the greatest novel in England.’
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