Born in 1941 and brought up in Ireland, Patrick Taylor managed to hoodwink the examiners sufficiently in Belfast in 1964 and London in 1969 to become a physician and then a specialist ob/byn. He spent 31 years in Canada teaching at a series of universities and churning out a string of research papers, more remarkable for their quantity than quality. These led to a misapprehension that his chosen genre was science fiction . . . at least according to a set of scientific peer reviewers. Because so many people laughed at his research (Infertility Treatment in the Lowland Gorilla, [Gorilla G Gorilla]), he turned his hand to writing humour columns for medical and sailing magazines in 1989, a pastime he follows to this day.
On your nightstand now:
Memoir by John McGahern. The autobiography of a well-known Irish writer who grew up in the village where I live. He captures rural, bygone Ireland with a vividness I will never achieve. Empire of the Sun by J.G. Ballard. The film was intriguing, and I've always enjoyed Ballard's writing.
Favorite book when you were a child:
The Doctor Dolittle series by Hugh Lofting, who for some peculiar reason I was convinced was called Huge Lofting. Who could not love a pig called Gub-Gub or the Pushmi-pullyu, a two-headed antelope?
Your top five authors:
Only five? How mean. Any author whose books I read and reread is a favourite. Five? All right. Dickens, for his dialogue. Mark Twain, for his humour. Graham Greene, for his stark ability to bring a scene alive with absolute economy of words. C.S. Forester, for his simple yet evocative stories of a time gone by. And Oscar Wilde, for his humour and for the lyricism of his children's stories.
Book you've faked reading:
The Woodlander by Thomas Hardy. Required school reading to pass an exam. It was so turgid I bought a set of cheater's notes . . . and passed. (The Da Vinci Code is a very close runner up.)
Book you're an evangelist for:
Shogun by James Clavell. Masterly storytelling, fantastic evocation of mediaeval Japan and after six years of mispronunciation, I can now say Showgoon properly.
Book you've bought for the cover:
Lady Chatterly's Lover. The red margin, white cover Penguin edition with the phoenix rising from the flames was so eye catching it leapt off the shelf. Isn't that why everybody bought it in 1961 after the obscenity trial? And Master and Commander by Patrick O'Brian. I've been a fan of his and the art of Geoff Hunt ever since.
Book that changed your life:
The Citadel by A.J. Cronin. The story of a young doctor. I read it when I was considering going into medicine. I think it clinched it for me.
Favorite line from a book:
"What the hell kind of a name is Yossarian?" Lieutenant Scheisskopf had the facts at his fingertips. "It's Yossarian's name, sir," he explained.--Joseph Heller, Catch 22
Book you most want to read again for the first time:
The Year of the French by Thomas Flanagan. A lovingly detailed account of the doomed rising in 1798 of the United Irishmen stiffened by two regiments of French soldiers who landed at Killala in County Mayo. The prose is poetically wrought and the story told so evocatively that the reader is taken there to live through another of Ireland's tragic failures.