I decided a couple of years ago that classic books and I had been estranged for too long. A diet of WWII from every angle and self-serving autobiographies was all very well, but (apart from Wodehouse and Runyon) what had I been missing out on since school? School, where I hated every minute of Chaucer and Shakespeare, but adored the modern British stuff like Billy Liar, The Long and the Short and the Tall, and the slightly less modern Far From the Madding Crowd. As I am unabl