Escaping the Lockdown

‘It's that old cliché of getting lost in a book. You want something that you can get immersed in, that takes you out of what is an extremely difficult time or all of us - and a lot of classic novels do that... I think this period, if it's doing nothing else, is probably making reading a more central part of people's lives than before. Reading is always in one sense, a form of escape. It's escaping into a life which is not the life that you're actually having to live. That's why we do it.'

Penelope Lively, author of Booker Prize-winning Moon Tiger, Family Album and more than 38 other books for adults and children in the Observer