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The reason I've included it as a favourite is because the edition I have, published by Dragon's Dream in 1982, is illustrated by the great Alan Lee. A close associate of Brian Froud during the seventies, Alan Lee's misty watercolours and intensely detailed pen and pencil drawings have graced dozens of books, and he is probably best known nowadays as the illustrator of Tolkein and one of the conceptual designers on the movie version of The Lord of the Rings, some scenes of which look like Alan Lee pictures sprung to life. I love all his work, but I don't think he has ever been better than in his paintings for The Mabinogion, which sit in his own fantastically designed borders of Celtic knotwork, like beautiful windows into a world of magic and legend.

The God Beneath the Sea by Leon Garfield and Edward Blishen, illustrated by Charles Keeping

This is a brilliant book, and I was shocked to discover that it's currently out of print, as it's the best retelling of Greek myths that I've ever encountered. It starts with a fiery baby being hurled out the sky, and goes on to tell the whole story of the creation of the world, the war between the gods and the Titans, the making of mankind, and the legends of Prometheus and Pandora. The familiar tales are woven together into a fast-paced narrative that is more like a novel than a collection of separate stories. There is great beauty here, and great darkness and cruelty too. And as an added bonus it's all illustrated with wild, dark, wiry drawings by the great Charles Keeping.

Bleak House by Charles Dickens

Where would British telly be without Charles Dickens? The Sunday night schedules would be half empty, and the streets of London would be littered with unemployed character actors. In 1985 the BBC did a rather good adaptation of Bleak House, and watching it made me realise that Dickens's world is actually much darker and more fantastic than most of the fantasy I'd been reading at that time. So I read the book, and it's brilliant. There are secrets within secrets, a cast of fascinating and grotesque characters (one of whom spontaneously combusts), a court case which has been going on for generations and a sense of London as almost a living thing, dark and all-devouring. This is the book that I was re-reading when I got the idea for Mortal Engines.

Fire's Astonishment by Geraldine McCaughrean

I read this when I was in my twenties, and it made me want to write a novel of my own. Geraldine McCaughrean is rightly hailed as one of our greatest children's authors - I don't know why they don't just give her the Carnegie Medal every year to save time and effort - but for some reason her adult novels are much less well known.

Fire's Astonishment is based on a mediaeval poem; a nobleman's son is turned into a dragon by his wicked stepmother. Around this central idea the novel spins a glorious tapestry of mediaeval life, filled with vivid, imperfect yet sympathetic characters. There is the young man who finds himself endragoned and growing less and less human while he struggles to convince people that is still him inside that scaly skin. There is the timid, failed monk who befriends him. There is his fiancé, whose father marries her off instead to an elderly neighbour, a marriage which, against all our expectations, turns out happily. And there is Geraldine McCaughrean's magnificent prose, her skeins of linked metaphors, her startling similes, her artist's eye for the telling details of the world. I love this book!

You can find out more about Geraldine McCaughrean and her many books at www.geraldinemccaughrean.co.uk

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