A Good Read: Christopher Eccleston and Lindsey Hilsum

Books and Authors

JUST KIDS by Patti Smith, chosen by Lindsey Hilsum MAN'S SEARCH FOR MEANING by Viktor E. Frankl (trans. Ilse Lasch), chosen by Christopher Eccleston TOWARDS THE END OF THE MORNING by Michael Frayn, chosen by Harriett Gilbert

The television journalist and actor share favourite books with Harriett Gilbert.

Lindsey Hilsum, International Editor of Channel 4 News, loves Patti Smith's memoir Just Kids, her account of coming to New York as a young woman and of her relationship with the photographer Robert Mapplethorpe. It's a coming-of-age story set against the heady backdrop of 1970s counterculture; it's a story of becoming an artist; and it's a love story that turns into an elegy.

The actor Christopher Eccleston chooses Man's Search for Meaning, the psychotherapist Viktor Frankl's account of his time in Nazi concentration camps and how those experiences informed his belief that man's deepest need is to search for meaning and purpose. It's a powerful book about retaining one's humanity in the face of unimaginable suffering and degradation.

And Harriett Gilbert chooses Towards the End of the Morning, Michael Frayn's 1967 satire about journalists working on a newspaper during the heyday of Fleet Street.

Produced by Mair Bosworth for BBC Audio