MOST OF US go through life with a sense of guilt about the places we have not visited and the books we have not read.

There is something shameful about the fact that I’ve never been to Buenos Aires, Sydney or Berlin. It is even more shameful that I have never got through more than a few pages of Proust or Homer’s Iliad.

There are seven shortish prose works I would advise everyone to read before their thirties. They are liberating books, which open up new worlds of experience and feeling.

I would put St John’s Gospel first, for Christians but particularly for non-Christians. It is the most vivid portrait of Jesus, by the friend who knew him best.

Second is Xenophon’s Memoirs of Socrates, including the scene of his death. It is another friend’s portrait of the man as well as the philosopher.

Third is John Locke’s Letters on Toleration, the founding idea of English liberal society.

Fourth is Francis Bacon’s Essays. Pope called Bacon The Wisest, Brightest, Meanest of Mankind, but the Essays are the great Elizabethan example of English humanism.

My fifth choice, a longer book, is Thackeray’s novel, Vanity Fair — the essence of England in the early 19th century. My sixth is Mrs Piozzi’s Anecdotes of Samuel Johnson. Thackeray portrays a woman as seen by a man; the Anecdotes show a great man seen by a woman. I would end with George Orwell’s Animal Farm.

All seven books could be read inside a week’s holiday. That would be both delightful and a lifetime’s education.

JOANNE HARRIS

“Make peace with your parents. The older generation won’t live for ever”

LIBBY PURVES