The author on the brilliance of Burroughs, Penelope Fitzgerald’s concise mastery, and a teenage obsession with Middle-earth

My earliest reading memory
AA Milne’s When We Were Very Young. I knew most of the poems by heart from having them read to me, and I can still just capture the moment when chanting along and pretending to be able to read morphed magically into knowing and reading the words for myself.

My favourite book growing up
Anything by PG Wodehouse, but most of all the books about Jeeves and Bertie Wooster, brilliantly played on TV in the 1960s by Dennis Price and Ian Carmichael. At school we all imitated both of them, and I carried on speaking like Jeeves for years, which must have become quite annoying for everyone else.