“My grave will be called ‘Mount Cleese,’” says the actor, comedian and screenwriter, whose new book is “Creativity.”
What’s the last great book you read?
Iain McGilchrist’s “The Master and His Emissary.” The author taught English at Oxford, decided one should not try to explain poems, qualified as a doctor, then as a psychiatrist, and then worked at Johns Hopkins neuroimaging the brain. Starting with the fact that our two hemispheres are asymmetrical, he explores how this affects our minds in every way, and how the balance between our two hemispheres has been lost.
This book has, more than any others, explained things I have been puzzled by for decades, in particular the shortcomings of pure intellectualism.
Describe your ideal reading experience (when, where, what, how).
My ideal reading scenario is an armchair in a cool room. Outside, sunshine and a pool; inside, a herd of cats and an endless flow of elderberry cordial; and opposite me on the sofa, my wife, Fish, so that I can look at her now and again.
What kind of reader were you as a child? Which childhood books and authors stick with you most?
As a child I read mainly about animals and cricket. I’ve always had an intense, soppy relationship with furry creatures, so I consumed the Doctor Doolittle books, and Elleston Trevor’s “Deep Wood” and “Badger’s Moon,” and Kenneth Grahame’s “The Wind in the Willows” and Percy FitzPatrick’s “Jock of the Bushveld.”
Then in my teens I read adventure novels, probably to compensate for my lack of boldness. I loved Conan Doyle’s books about Brigadier Gerard, the Horatio Hornblower stories, Alexandre Dumas’s swashbucklers, Rafael Sabatini’s pirate romps, and John Buchan’s “The Thirty-Nine Steps” and “Greenmantle” and “The Three Hostages,” where muscular ex-public schoolboys could effortlessly disguise themselves as skinny Lascar carpet salesmen without any of the locals noticing anything “a bit rum.”
