There's only one thing that's better than reading a book and that is to have it read to you in bed, especially if it is read to you by the author himself. Last night I was wonderfully warm in bed, not sleeping with Linda but listening to my audiobook of Douglas Murray's "The War on the West".
Click here for a sample of the audiobook
I was so enthralled by his incisive takedown of foolish anti-Western arguments that I totally forgot to switch over to my usual nightcap, Phillip Adams' Late Night Live on ABC Radio which, as it so happened, was about another of my many favourite writers, Simon Winchester, perhaps best-known for his book "The Surgeon of Crowthorne", a non-fiction history book about the beginnings of another of my favourite books, the Oxford English Dictionary. As well, Simon Winchester wrote "The Man Who Loved China", "The Map that Changed the World", "Krakatoa - The Day the World Exploded", and thirty other non-fiction books, right down to his latest masterpiece, "Knowing What We Know - The Transmission of Knowledge From Ancient Wisdom to Modern Magic".
Luckily, Late Night Live comes alive again the next afternoon at three o'clock, which allowed me to slip back under the covers - with Linda switched on high! - to listen to The adventures of Simon Winchester.
