Beauvoir

Margaret Atwood is the author of more than 50 books of fiction, poetry and essays. Her novels include Cat’s Eye, The Robber Bride, Alias Grace and The Blind Assassin. Her 1985 classic, The Handmaid’s Tale, was followed in 2019 by a sequel, The Testaments, which shared the Booker prize. Old Babes in the Wood is her first collection of stories since then – and since the death of her partner, Graeme Gibson, the same year. Atwood brings her trademark wit and invention to bear on subjects as diverse as a pandemic, cancel…

My earliest reading memoryI was seven years old and already drawn to distant countries when I read The Children’s Tales from Other Lands, retold by FH Lee. These were simple fables from countries that filled me with wonder: Arabia, China, Egypt, Russia. I still have my disintegrated copy of the book, scrawled with my child’s crayons.My favourite book growing upIn my prep school library The Log of the Ark by Kenneth Walker was the one I loved, fascinated by its tale of Noah’s gathering the animals. Some of these were…