NIGHT-TABLE READING

Who reads what between the sheets

ATHOL FUGARD (playwright): A Revolutionary Woman, by Sheila Fugard (Braziller). “This book’s message of feminism and pacifism is one of the most serious challenges to me as a man that I’ve recently encountered in South African literature.”

MARILYN HORNE (opera singer): How to Sing, by Lili Lehmann (Collage). “If this book is beside my bed, it’s obvious that I still don’t think I know.”

JOHN KNOWLES (writer): Anastasia: The Riddle of Anna Anderson, by Peter Kurth (Little, Brown). “Seems at last to resolve the great mystery for us Russian-history buffs: her identity.”

ALISTAIR COOKE (television host): “Quite simple. For several years, the same work, Ego: The Diaries of James Agate [Harrap]. By the time I’ve finished the ninth volume, I’m ready to start again on the first.”