DJ and presenter Mike Read on his career as an author

Mike Read, 77, who lives near Fittleworth in West Sussex, is best known as a former Radio 1 DJ, but he also hosted Top of the Pops, Saturday Superstore and Pop Quiz for the BBC. He currently hosts The Heritage Chart Show on various radio stations and co-hosts The Footage Detectives with Talking Pictures TV founder Noel Cronin. Read has also written more than 50 books. His latest, The Writing on the Wall: 100 Blue Plaques Commemorating Britain’s History, is out now (£10, G2books.com)

The book I loved as a child

JM Barrie’s Peter Pan made me believe that anything was possible and transported me to another world. I recall grandly informing my parents that I was never going to grow up and that one day I really would fly. I achieved only one of those predictions.

The book that inspired me as a teenager

It’s two, both by JRR Tolkien – The Hobbit and Lord of the Rings. However much has been spent on the film adaptations, you can never create the billion-dollar scenery your imagination can conjure up.

The book I’ve never finished

Reading matter in the small room normally extends to the frivolous, cheeky or pictorial, so I have no idea why Edward Gibbons’ The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire sat on the window sill of the upstairs loo for years. I’ve never finished it.

The book that moved me most

The Hammersteins by Oscar Andrew Hammerstein. I was particularly moved by the story of Oscar Hammerstein III’s grandfather, Oscar Hammerstein I. Born in Prussia, he emigrated to New York, aged just 17. There, he became an enthusiastic inventor, eventually owning 80 patents, which gave him the freedom to explore his first love, opera. He built no fewer than seven theatres in New York. He also struck a bet that he couldn’t write a musical in 48 hours. But he did and it ran for nine months.

The book I’m reading now

It’s more a book I’m waiting to read. I’ve read all Peter James’s books. He’s a natural crime writer and his books are brilliantly conceived and executed. I’m eagerly awaiting his new tome in September, One Of Us Is Dead.