World Book Day 2023 with Dr Katherine Rundell (2005, English Language & Literature)

To celebrate World Book Day 2023, we asked Dr Katherine Rundell (2005, English Language & Literature)—bestselling and award-winning author of children’s books including Rooftoppers and The Wolf Wilder, as well as the Sunday Times bestseller Super-Infinite: The Transformations of John Donne—to share what books she read as an undergraduate at Catz that she would recommend to others in the Catz community.

In my first year of undergrad, I read James Baldwin’s Go Tell it on a Mountain; it was electric – a breathtaking piece of work – and that term I stayed up late at nights to read all his fiction. And, it was at Catz that I studied the poetry of John Donne, with Bart van Es. I ended by writing a doctoral thesis and then a book about Donne; about the wild strangeness and beauty of his love poetry, his bold invention, his insistence on using the full sweep of his formidable intellect in his work, whether people wanted it or not.

Are there any books that you would recommend to the Catz community? Tag or message us on Instagram, Twitter, or Facebook to share your answers!