Discover the literary secrets of some of the UK's best-known authors, including Marian Keyes, Sebastian Faulks, Louis de Bernières and Jojo Moyes. Each sits down in conversation with the Telegraph's Laura Powell, accompanied by the four books that they treasure above all others.  My Life In Books. 

My Life in Books

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Ruth Jones is best known for playing Nessa in Gavin and Stacey - the BBC TV comedy she co-wrote with James Corden - and also for starring in and writing the comedy series Stella, set in her native South Wales. Earlier this year she also wrote her first novel, Never Greener, which tells the story of a rekindled affair. It sparked a 10-way publishers bidding war and was immediately propelled to the top of the bestseller charts upon its release. Ruth lives in South Wales with her husband David, but she travelled to the Telegraph offices in London to talk to Laura Powell about love, marriage and what it was really like writing Gavin and Stacey with James Corden.  

Ruth Jones

Jojo Moyes was born in 1969 and grew up in London and went on to work as a minicab controller, braille typer and brochure writer for Club 18-30, before settling on journalism.  She worked as a journalist for ten years, including a year at South China Morning Post in Hong Kong, and nine at The Independent, before leaving to becoming a full-time novelist in 2002 around the publication of her first book, Sheltering Rain was published.  Since then she has written a further eleven novels, including Me Before You which has sold more than eight million copies and was turned into a film starring Emilia Clarke (Game of Thrones) and Sam Claflin (The Hunger Games), with the screenplay written by Moyes.  Her latest novel, Still Me, is the third in the trilogy following the character Louisa Clark, who first appeared in Me Before You.  Moyes joined The Telegraph's Laura Powell to talk about the struggle to get her first novel published, the making of Me Before You, turning to therapy after leaving journalism - and her secret writing weapon.

Jojo Moyes

Sebastian Faulks began his writing career as a journalist - including a stint at the Daily Telegraph - before publishing his first novel, The Girl at the Lion d'Or, in 1989. He’s gone on to write over a dozen more novels, including Charlotte Gray, Engleby, and Human Traces -- but is perhaps best known for Birdsong, a war novel and family saga which moves between the trenches of World War One and late-1970s England, and which consistently appears on surveys of the nation’s favourite books. His latest work, Paris Echo, is set in contemporary France, and follows two outsiders as they navigate the city - their steps echoed by testimonials from women who lived there under German occupation during the Second World War. He joined Laura Powell to talk about inspiration, journalism, Paris - and his life in books.

Sebastian Faulks

Growing up, Marian Keyes never thought of herself as a writer - and came to her profession almost by accident in the early 1990s.    She has since become one of Ireland’s most successful novelists - with over 35 million copies of her thirteen works sold to date. Keyes is beloved to her readers for her wit, her conversational prose style, and for the unflinching honesty with which she approaches her subjects, which include depression, infidelity domestic abuse and the glass ceiling.    Here, she talks to Laura Powell about love, marriage, her own journey through depression - and her latest novel, The Break.

Marian Keyes

Born in London in 1954, Louis de Bernières published his first book in 1990 and since then has written two volumes of poetry, numerous works of short fiction and eight novels. He’s best known for Captain Corelli’s Mandolin, a musical, richly-layered love story, set during the Second World War - which won the Commonwealth Writers' Prize for Best Novel in 1994 and was later made into a film with Nicolas Cage and Penelope Cruz. In a lively and unusually revealing conversation, he speaks to the Telegraph’s Laura Powell about his successes, his struggles, and the three books that have most profoundly shaped him.

Louis de Bernières

The authors you love. The books that shaped them.