A classic I should have read long ago. It bounces up and down along the surface – entertaining, amusing. Then with the introduction of Bernhard Landauer you find you’re slithering and bumping down the crumbling cliff until you end up in a bruised heap at the bottom.

In this story none of the characters comes out well, and there isn’t a happy ending.

Not having done any Chaucer at school, reading The Canterbury Tales is one of those things I promised myself I would find time for and am pleased to have done at last! Although some parts are rather tedious six centuries or so later, it’s obvious why the popular bits are popular. I confess to having barely skipped through the Parson’s Tale (not a Tale at all, rather the sort of sermon that would send an entire congregation into a deep coma), but even the editor’s introduction describes it as "rarely read".

Having scoffed at David Whyte’s references to this Anglo-Saxon poem, I thought I’d better read it. Strong shades of Tolkien, which is not surprising, as he wrote possibly the most influential critique of the work in the 20th century.