It is a classic for a reason: it conveys and explores preoccupying, pervading themes, those which are indeed relevant to today. Nineteen Eighty-Four is a novel which deals with such paradigms as perpetual surveillance, spying, sexual prohibition and political power. For this reason – the fact that it’s timeless – it is a novel which needs to be sitting on your shelf.

Lying at the heart of the …

At a short literary conference, in which I speak tentatively about McEwan’s Saturday, an ex-tutor rather probingly, provocatively cross-examines: ‘But isn’t he just an old fart?’ To which I reply: ‘I, personally, just don’t see that reflected in his writing’.

Because McEwan is the master of writing on relationships: this is his forte. It is, it could be argued, precisely what we read a McEwan …