Fifty-Five Years of Hurt… What We Were Reading in ’66

Finally, finally, after 55 long and painful years, England have made it to a major international final. But what were we all reading when they won the World Cup back in 1966? These are some of the best books published that year and there are some proper screamers among this lot. My personal favourites on this list are Valley of the Dolls, Jacqueline Susans’s gloriously entertaining story of pills and ambition, and Season Of Migration To The North by Tayeb Salih, a dark and gripping look at post-colonial Africa by one of the 20th century’s great Arab writers.