The task of compiling a Personal Anthology is, of course, impossible. I’ve sometimes daydreamed about what I would choose if I were ever invited onto Desert Island Discs, a programme I’ve always found fascinating in what it either reveals or knowingly conceals about its subjects’ predilections. And then realised that I own several thousand albums, and picking just eight tracks is like being asked to save the lives of a minibus-worth of the citizens from the population of a sprawling city.
Choosing the contents of The Personal Anthology is – apart from the thankful lack of bloodshed – little different. There’s a library’s worth of stories not included here and, although it’s surely a heresy for a literary festival organiser in 2024, I’ve abandoned any thought of curating against any list of boxes that must be ticked. These are simply the stories that most immediately sprung to mind when I asked myself ‘What are the stories that have stayed with me and linger in the memory the longest?’ These may not even be the stories I would call ‘the best’: they have not been picked on technical merit, but they are ones I would be happy to be stranded with in some mythical hellscape with no other reading matter to hand. (My luxury item would, by the way, be a piano. I am a guitar player who longs to be a pianist, and isolation would give me the practice time. I could, after all, write in the sand with a stick and let the tides be a merciful copyeditor.)
A Personal Anthology 