The first John Berger novel I read was A Painter of Our Time.

I picked it up as part of a two-for-a-pound offer in a charity shop in 1999. It was the second choice, the filler just because I needed another book to make the offer worthwhile. My first choice? A dirty copy of London Fields by Martin Amis. Anyway, among all the self-help books and the Kathy Lette’s, I spotted the name John Berger, and thought, “That’ll do.”