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The Best Book to Read is the BibleIn the Daily Mail, Saturday, 14 December, John Mortimer, author and creator of Rumpole of the Bailey, set out his list of the top 100 greatest books of all time. At the top of his list was the King James Bible, which is also known as The Authorised Version of the Bible (1611).In his criteria for what makes a great book, he declares that "A great book is one that could only have been written by that author at a specific moment in time, and yet it must contain enough of the truth about the human condition to be timeless." As far as the Bible is concerned, he continues, "Many of the books on my best-loved list used to be part of a common culture, not only among the privileged, university-educated classes, but among miners too, and chapel-going steelworkers who knew the Bible, had a piano in the front room, sang in choirs and had a book or two by Dickens. |
"They knew a little poetry and, before television took over our lives, probably saw some touring Shakespeare. "Now, the Bible and the works of Shakespeare are, of course, on the desert island of Radio 4's Desert Island Discs but not so much in schools or in many houses. Having the great sentences of the Bible in their heads made politicians speak well and avoid the meaningless waffle of today's parliamentarians. "The majority of students going to university to study English, instead of the more allegedly practical courses such as golf course management and aromatherapy, on which the Government is spending its money, have not read the King James Bible, which is the key to much of our literature."
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