Everyone enjoys the feeling of discovering a new book that turns out to be The Best Book You Ever Read. And some people have favourites that they turn to again and again. Recently I’ve discovered the joys, not of old favourites, but of books that I didn’t like the first time round. One of the best things about working in publishing is that you are forced to read things that you wouldn’t normally choose all the time. (Although I should disabuse you of the notion that editors have a lovely old time sitting at their desks reading jolly books all day. We have day jobs and then we do the reading while we try to make dinner or wash ourselves or pretend to listen to our children).

Part of my job working on Vintage Classics has been to reread lots of texts which I first tried when I was at school. Despite the TV-induced rehabilitation of Jane Eyre, when I came to the sad-faced ranks of Brontës I have to say that my heart failed a bit as I thought Wuthering Heights was stunningly boring when I was twelve. Now, with the benefit of more years of reading (and more experience of mad people) under my belt, I absolutely love it.

I had an even more surprising time with A Christmas Carol. I remember this book really well, it’s impossible not to be familiar with it, and it perfectly encapsulates Alan Bennett’s definition of a classic as ‘a book everyone is assumed to have read and often thinks they have’. And my snooty opinion of it was that it was twee and sentimental and for babies and not something I wanted to go back to really, while Dostoevsky was sitting out there panting in the snow for me. And it is sentimental, there’s no doubt about that. But it’s also wry and satirical and amusing in ways I hadn’t expected. (And I have no idea how I managed to forget the description of Marley’s ghost as having a ‘dismal light about it, like a bad lobster in a dark cellar’). So I would encourage you to cast-off your prejudices about classics as boring or homeworky as it turns out those millions of fans over the centuries might just be right – even about the ones you didn’t like in English lessons.