Richard E. Grant names his 10 favourite books
There are a number of British actors who typify the country’s sensibilities. We’re talking about comedians Rowan Atkinson, Eric Idle and Matt Berry, and Hollywood icons such as Judi Dench, Hugh Grant and Daniel Day-Lewis, to name a few. But, there are others who blur the lines, becoming iconic merely for being unashamedly themselves, just like the actor and presenter Richard E. Grant.
Sparking his professional career back in the early 1980s, Grant would catapult himself to fame upon his very first feature film role, appearing as the title character in the iconic Bruce Robinson comedy Withnail & I in 1983. Success would continue in the following years, collaborating with several high-profile directors, including Robert Altman for The Player, Francis Ford Coppola for his gothic retelling of Bram Stoker’s Dracula and Martin Scorsese for his 1993 romance The Age of Innocence.
Having gained a great following thanks to his electric charisma, fans are always keen to hear what Grant has to say about pop culture, once naming his ten favourite books of all time.
The first of his picks went to the Lewis Carroll novel Alice’s Adventures In Wonderland, an iconic fantasy tale that has been adapted into countless movies, including Jan Švankmajer’s 1988 film Alice. “I first read when I was a little boy and have every year since,” Grant told the publication, “The best guide to the English class system, sense of humour, and innately eccentric sensibility”.
Grant chooses another iconic novel for his second pick, opting for the American classic The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald. Adapted for the screen in 2013 for the Baz Luhrmann movie of the same name, Grant stated of the book: “An unrequited love letter to the Jazz Age that manages to be both intimate, epic and achingly romantic about an era that almost never was”.
His third pick is one particularly close to his heart, opting for the Peculiar Memories Of Thomas Penman by Bruce Robinson, who also helmed and directed Grant’s breakout film. “A biliously funny and mordant ‘autobiography’ by my great friend who wrote me the role of a lifetime in Withnail and I,” the actor simply said of the book, nicely summarising the greatest strengths of the critical favourite.
A lover of the classics Pride and Prejudice takes a further spot on Grant’s list, with the period drama by Jane Austen being adapted several times for stage and screen. Speaking about the novel, Grant stated: “Class, money and marriage in a book that manages to combine insight, malice and the magnificence of romantic misunderstanding”.
Take a look at the whole of Grant’s list below, which includes other books from the likes of Russell Davies, Gabriel García Márquez and Martin Amis.
Richard E. Grant’s 10 favourite books:
- Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland (Lewis Carroll, 1865)
- The Great Gatsby (F.Scott Fitzgerald, 1925)
- The Kenneth Williams Diaries (Russell Davies, 1994)
- Love In The Time Of Cholera (Gabriel García Márquez, 1985)
- Money (Martin Amis, 1984)
- Peculiar Memories Of Thomas Penman (Bruce Robinson, 1997)
- Perfume: The Story Of A Murderer (Patrick Süskind, 1985)
- Pride and Prejudice (Jane Austen, 1813)
- Timebends: A Life (Arthur Miller, 1987)
- To The Lighthouse (Virginia Woolf, 1927)
