WHAT BOOK would Joanna Scanlan take to a desert island?

… are you reading now?

Catch And Kill: Lies, Spies And A Conspiracy to Protect Predators, Ronan Farrow’s blindsiding account of his attempt to make public investigations into Harvey Weinstein’s alleged sexual abuses. It’s as gripping and fantastical as any 21st century thriller.

I thought I knew a bit about the subject, not only because over the years I had heard rumours within the industry but also because I like to think I generally ‘keep up’, but Farrow’s book is a terrifying exposé of the dense, tangled web of power in New York City that conspired to protect its own.

The book makes me question my naïve faith in the principles of those who make the news, who in this case ultimately failed to respond to hard evidence. Yet Farrow’s account simultaneously has me hollering three cheers for the courage of those journalists, publishers and editors who did eventually break the story, including Farrow himself.

… would you take to a desert island?

If I had the misfortune to be stuck on a desert island I would need to read something soothing but just acidic enough to tickle the grey matter. Lissa Evans’ Old Baggage would do the trick beautifully. 

Every line suggests whole volumes of back story which would fire my own imagination and keep me going till that rescue boat appeared on the horizon.

If it never did, then at least I would be thoroughly entertained as I clawed the sand, heaving for my last breath. Set between the wars, it is a dazzling comic drama which tells of an unfortunate series of events among former suffragettes who hope to indoctrinate the next generation of youngsters.

With the doughty Mattie Simpkin at its heart, the emotional tapestry of this novel is so rich it makes you laugh and cry at the same moment. I had the challenge of reading Old Baggage for Audible and had to stop several times to do both.

… first gave you the reading bug?

I read buckets of books as a child including any by Enid Blyton, Josephine Pullein-Thompson and Angela Brazil I could lay my hands on, but it was a duo of slim volumes written in the year of my birth, 1961, by Jean Plaidy that really gave me the bug — The Young Elizabeth and The Young Mary Queen of Scots.

The books recount the augural childhoods of these two ineffably sublime queens. Who knew that the Scottish queen was actually French, surrounded by friends all called Mary, and a child bride? Jean Plaidy was one of at least eight pen names of Eleanor Hibbert who published more than 200 books, and good ones too, though these and one other, about Thomas More’s daughter Meg, were her only foray into writing for children. 

I went on to study the Tudors and then read history at Queens’ College, Cambridge, so these tales cast a long shadow.

… left you cold? 

To my shame I have never even attempted The Handmaid’s Tale. Even when its popularity came second time round following the TV series. I am so pathologically frightened of dystopian fiction, I never managed to get beyond the front cover. I know that the whole point of dystopian fiction is that it is in fact all about now not the future, but I’m terrified of a read that doesn’t give me enough familiar handles to grab hold of in Chapter One.

Even though every storymaker makes up their own rules, I don’t welcome the jolt into quasi-technological sounding names and weather I can’t recognise. Not that I’m accusing Margaret Atwood of either of those things because I haven’t read her. I know, my loss.

Joanna Scanlon is a judge for the Comedy Women in Print Prize 2020. Entries close March 2, 2020. For more information visit comedywomeninprint.co.uk