Sheila Hancock's 6 best books

Sheila Hancock first found fame in BBC sitcom The Rag Trade in 1961 and has been a fixture on stage and TV ever since. She played "Grandma" in the 2008 movie, The Boy in the Striped Pajamas.

Hancock named her six best books for the Daily Express. One title on her list:

American Pastoral
by Philip Roth

A brilliant novel about the amazing growth of America, with its huge immigrant population, by a great American man of letters. I read this recently and it not only moved me but had a profound impact on me. I was shaking when I finished it. A warning for our time.

Read about another title on Hancock's list.

American Pastoral is one of Maria Semple's six best books and one of Ward Just's five favorite novels about the pursuit of money. It appears on John Mullan's list of ten of the best riots in literature.

--Marshal Zeringue