Charlie English
Charlie English, author of The Snow Tourist confesses to a surprising guilty pleasure.
Charlie English
1. When were you happiest?
Aged 12, on my frst descent of the White Lady, the best black run on Cairngorm, on skis.
2. What is your principle defect?
I don’t have a big one, just lots of little ones
3. What makes you depressed?
Feeling I don’t have anything to do.
4. What do you most dislike about your appearance?
I want to be a stone lighter
5. What is your favourite word?
Qikiqtarjuaq
6. What is your most unappealing habit?
If I have a public engagement of some sort I spend a lot of time telling my friends and family how worried I am about it. Then when it’s over, I forget that they listened and boast to them about how good I was.
7. What is your favourite smell?
New snow.
8. What is your guiltiest pleasure?
I like James May’s television programmes.
9. Who are your favourite writers?
Michael Frayn, Ian McEwan, Jonathan Raban, Robert Harris, Joanna Kavenna, WG Sebald
10. What is the worst job you've done?
The six weeks I lasted as a doorstepping journalist.
11. When did you last cry, and why?
Wandering round the “children at war” exhibition at the Imperial War Museum the other day.
12. What do you most value in you friends?
Money. Not really.
13. What gift would you most like to possess?
It’s a toss-up between drums and piano. I’ve always wanted to play drums but now I think a surprising genius with the piano might be more useful.
14. What was your most embarrassing moment?
Sleepwalking into my mother-in-law’s bedroom naked.
15. What is your most treasured possession?
My internet connection.
16. What is the worst thing anyone's said to you?
“We can’t recover the data.”
17. If you could edit your past, what would you change?
I don’t want to waste time thinking about that.
18. If you could go back in time, where would you go?
To the Alps with the Shelleys.
19. What is your greatest fear?
Death by falling from a great height in some remote place.
20. What is the most important lesson life has taught you?
Keep going. It will all eventually get easier
