Swallows and Amazons

Where to start? Let's start here. The classic 1930 story of four children holidaying in the Lake District and, to an Asian kid growing up in 1970s London, almost impossibly exotic.

John, Susan, Titty and Roger Walker sail a dinghy called Swallow, camp on an island, and meet pirates (other children), Nancy and Peggy Blackett – the Amazons. They have camp fires and eat cool stuff like pemmican (corned beef) and buttered eggs (scrambled, apparently) and drink grog (ginger beer) from stone bottles. There's a thunderstorm in the middle of the novel which is incredibly atmospheric, and the rivalry and eventual friendship with the Blacketts and the contests they have with one another for sailing supremacy are simply wonderful.

To me, the whole book was like an instruction manual for adventure. I tried to teach myself (unsuccessfully) to swim using the author's illustrations of Roger doing likewise. To this day my speech is peppered with nautical terms. I know what a centreboard is and I can tie a reef knot.

I didn't go on many summer holidays as a kid – and certainly not under canvas – so when I had children of my own I was desperate to take them camping. And that first night we spent under blue ripstop nylon in my early 30s was as vivid as my 8-year old self could have possibly hoped.

It's the only book which I paid my own children to read in the hope that they would love it as much as I had. They didn't of course. They have their own touchstones and, given the period setting, they found it hard to make out what was imagined by the Swallows and what were actual events.

But for me that was the whole point: a blurring of reality and fantasy that allowed a suburban 70s 2nd-generation immigrant to share the experience of four children from the 1930s. It is without doubt the single most influential book I have ever read and certainly one of the #100BooksThatMadeMeAWriter. And though I have yet to go sailing, I have dreamt of the water ever since.