Julian Barnes: 'When I first read EM Forster, I thought he was a bit wet'

The author on being impressed by Dostoevsky and influenced by the dictionary - and wanting to drive Noddy's famous yellow car My earliest reading memoryAlmost certainly one of the Noddy books. I deeply believed in the reality of Toyland and wanted to drive a car like Noddy's (even though it was a taxi). My favourite book growing upSpeed Six by Bruce Carter, about a pre-war Bentley, painted British racing green, which takes on and beats various postwar foreign cars - Maseratis and so on - at Le M...