John Cleese's six favorite books

John Cleese is an actor, producer, writer, one of the co-founders of Monty Python, and the author of a memoir, So Anyway. One of his six favorite books, as shared at The Week magazine:

War and Peace by Leo Tolstoy

It's been many years since I read this one, but I can still remember certain sequences: men riding horseback into battle, and the way they try to distract themselves from the fact that they could be dead or wounded terribly in an hour's time.

Read about the other entries on the list.

War and Peace appears among Kate Kellaway's ten best Christmases in literature, the Telegraph's ten best historical novels, Simon Sebag Montefiore's five top books about Moscow, Oliver Ford Davies's six best books, Stella Tillyard's four favorite historical novels, Ann Shevchenko's top ten novels set in Moscow, Karl Marlantes' top ten war stories, Niall Ferguson's five most important books, Norman Mailer's top ten works of literature, and John Mullan's lists of ten of the best battles in literature, ten of the best floggings in fiction, and ten of the best literary explosions.

--Marshal Zeringue