Gavin Francis, Michèle Roberts and Philip Davis chaired by Peter Kemp

Three writers, Dr Gavin Francis, Michèle Roberts, and Professor Philip Davis discuss what it means to really love a book. What is it like to feel that the writer is a vital part of your life long after you’ve finished reading a book. And what is it like to experience live, in the very act of reading, a thought, idea, doubt or memory.

All three writers have contributed to the My Reading series of books that explain why they care about favourite authors and books. Francis, a physician and writer on travel and medicine, explains the resonance for him of the 17th-century physician, wordsmith and polymath, Sir Thomas Browne, who contributed hundreds of words to the English language. Roberts, author of 15 novels, has written the forthcoming My Reading book about Colette. Roberts says she learned the importance of sensual imagery from the French novelist. Davis is emeritus professor of literature and psychology at the University of Liverpool. His book in the My Reading series is on the founder of psychology William James, elder brother of the novelist Henry James. He finds William James a thinker convinced of the validity of the inner life in the making of ‘the real’.