The annual Waterstone’s ComRes survey of MPs’ summer reading choices has just been published. You can read about the overall responses here, but I had a quick scan of the findings of the 12 Lib Dem MPs who replied to see what our party folk are planning to dip into during the parliamentary recess…
- The Idea of Justice – Amartya Sen = 14%
- Harry Potter = 14%
- Darren Shaw [do they mean ‘Darren Shan‘?] = 14%
- Solar – Ian McEwan = 12%
- The Third Man – Peter Mandelson = 7%
- The Wealth of Nations – Adam Smith = 7%
- De Gaulle – The Last Great Frenchman = 7%
- Philip II of Spain biography = 7%
- History of the Dominican Republic = 7%
- Alastair Campbell Diaries = 6%
- Collected Poems – R.S. Thomas = 5%
- Shirley Williams biography = 5%
- Paddy Ashdown biography = 5%
PS: I’ve no idea how the weighted percentages were calculated… so far as I can make out, any figure between 5-7% means one Lib Dem MP chose it; 12-14% means that two did.



3 Comments
Harry Potter?
How far behind the curve do you have to be to try to jump onto a bandwaggon years after it has passed you by?
What an insightful point Maria. Maybe, just maybe, they have children of the right age, or maybe they’re not ‘jumping on a bandwaggon’ but rather, would like to read the books. I read some Tolstoy the other day – definitely missed the ‘bandwaggon’ there.
Good to see Sen at the top though – thoroughly Lib Dem.
Sen has been gerrymandered into top place ahead of Potter, for obvious reasons.
Potter encapsulates the spirit of the day, a genial fantasy of upper class alliance bearing no relation to reality….