This is the list from the BBC of the favourite 21 books (they had to push the other Harry Potter books down the list, I am told). The names after the authors are people who I guess are going to be discussing the books in the rampup to the big no.1 finish. Looking at the list, the one obvious thing is that most of them are probably schoolbooks that people read then, and never read anything else! Anyone know anything about "His Dark Materials"? The only one I have never heard of.

yours, Peter T.

Birdsong by Sebastian Faulks (William Hague MP)
Captain Correlli's Mandolin by Louis de Bernières (Clare Short MP)
Catch-22 by Joseph L Heller (John Sergeant)
The Catcher in the Rye by JD Salinger (Ruby Wax)
Gone with the Wind by Margaret Mitchell (Arabella Weir)
Great Expectations by Charles Dickens (David Dimbleby)
Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire by JK Rowling (Fay Ripley)
His Dark Materials by Philip Pullman (Benedict Allen)
The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy by Douglas Adams (Sanjeev
                      Bhaskar)
Jane Eyre by Charlotte Brontë (Lorraine Kelly)
The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe by CS Lewis (Ronni Ancona)
Little Women by Louisa May Alcott (Sandi Toksvig)
The Lord of the Rings by JRR Tolkien (Ray Mears)
Nineteen Eighty-Four by George Orwell (Jo Brand)
Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen (Meera Syal)
Rebecca by Daphne du Maurier (Alan Titchmarsh)
To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee (John Humphrys)
War and Peace by Leo Tolstoy (Simon Schama)
The Wind in the Willows by Kenneth Grahame (Bill Oddie)
Winnie the Pooh by AA Milne (Phill Jupitus)
Wuthering Heights by Emily Brontë (Alistair McGowan)