(Now I'll have the Whiffenpoof Song stuck in my head all day)

What 5 series/books/movies can you rewatch/reread time and again?

I'm lazy and hence a chronic rereader. Ask me that question when I was in my 20s or 30s and I'd have a list like *that*. But now there's a limit to the times I can reread or watch and still be satisfied. So it's more like...

1. The entire oeuvre of Dick Francis. He reads easy, I like his characters, I like his attitudes, but there's no one favourite. Possibly Proof, to see if it's as slashy as it looked first time through, but I'm afraid to reread it and find it's not. If the passage of time could destroy Dostoevsky for me, think what it would do to Dick Francis.

2. Wang Wei, Poems, translated by Robinson. Sort of. Because now I start thinking Mhh wonder how much expansion there is *here* and start hankering for the text. I'd still bring this one to a desert island.

3. The Chronicles of Narnia. Something that still satisfies me after half a century has got to have something going for it.

4. Ohh yappari The Seven Samurai still. The wigs are ridiculous and the Japanese incomprehensible ('outdoor sound recording was in its infancy in those days') but the characters are still larger than life, the composition is still brilliant, and the whole thing still takes me Elsewhere for three and a half hours (half an hour per samurai, as my bro said.)

5. Pride and Prejudice. Neat, complete, and sui generis. This is the Austen people try to write when they try to write Austen and no one has ever surpassed it. Which is odd. One understands why Shakespearian tragedy began and ended with Shakespeare, but that Austen should have put paid to the Regency comedy of manners is a puzzlement. Especially since her English usage frequently gives my nascent editor fits and cows. 'Oh Jane Austen no!'