You will never complain again once you’ve read this book.

The true story of Shackleton’s epic, if ill-fated adventure across the Antarctic. Just when you think he and his men have reached their absolute limit, it gets worse.

But it’s a great example of an epic story being triggered by something not going to plan. So if you’ve been badly knocked off course in your own life, there’s still hope of doing something legendary without ever having intended to.

If you don’t believe in God don’t bother with this, you’ll never believe it.

The same applies if you believe in God but don’t believe in miracles, it’ll just annoy you.

But if you’re in the remaining category, you’ll love it. I had the privilege of spending time with this lady and have stayed at her orphanage in Mozambique. It’s another world.

She was only caring for 1000 street kids when I went but it’s gone way, way beyond that now. This is a modern-day Mother Theresa. Go on, I dare you, unbelievers, it might just change your mind!

It is books like these that bring history into tangible reality.

How you can tell the story of one residential house and help convey the brutality of the Nazi regime and the Berlin Wall and all that stuff defies belief, but this writer has done it.

Imagine having a lawn at the edge of a beautiful lake and one day, a team of builders begins to erect a concrete wall 20 foot high in the way of it, which is then patrolled with angry dogs day and night.

It’s brilliant.

Whenever my faith takes a bit of a knock, I get out my old Bible and take a few days to go slowly through John’s Gospel.

There’s a part of it where Jesus is explaining to the quite confused disciples what is going to happen after he is killed. The way it is written, makes me feel like I am literally in the room listening in.

What he describes has been so close to my own experience since I first took a step of faith, aged 35. It has the effect of bringing everything back into 3-D and I am off again.

I suffered a lot from exhaustion in the past and often ended up recuperating at the convent just outside Edenbridge. One day, I was in the library and this book virtually threw itself off the shelf at me.

It’s the story of the inmates in the famous high-security Second World War prison.

The thing that stood out for me was the Escape Committee. It was a group of a dozen or so allies from different countries, which would meet every day to discuss ways of breaking out. Because they all had different gifts but shared a common goal, they achieved extraordinary feats of daring.

It made me realise that all difficult endeavours require a team in which everyone has a role that fits them - so much less is often achieved on your own.

It also made me realise that you should never accept the dull circumstances in which you might find yourself - there is always something more to reach for. You just need a group of friends to help you break out of one paradigm and into another - because it isn’t easy.

I found going into marriage quite scary. I had grown up in an unhappy one and could not imagine any other scenario for mine.

But this book was a huge help. It describes the value of being ‘locked in’ with someone else and - as best you can - throwing away the key so that you really get down to brass tacks and learn about each other and how to live together.

Whenever we hear young people are getting married around us we now get on Amazon and forward them this book.

It’s never too late to try it, even if you have been married for years.

I’m sitting in a restaurant in Palm Springs on a filming assignment for Channel 4. I’m reading Stalingrad but keep looking up to watch the waiter emptying plates with piles of uneaten chicken wings and crab claws into the bin.

This would be hard to watch under any circumstances - but in the book I’m reading, German citizens under siege are literally licking the glue off strips of wallpaper to stay alive.

I’ve spent a lot of my life simultaneously occupying places of great wealth and extreme poverty. No particular conclusion, I just wanted to share that.

I was playing golf in Scotland aged 16 when I bumped into an American financier called Fraser Gunn. A keen golfer himself, he felt he spotted potential in me and paid for me to go to the States and train under a top pro.

When I got there, the pro didn’t rate me quite as highly as Fraser had, so I did the training and returned to pursue golf for fun. But Fraser and I remained friends for many years and one day he gave me this book - “Jez, this is the greatest frickin’ book ever written on the short game”.

I knew it hurt him to part with it so it meant a lot to me.

When I started work, I moved to London aged 22. I got a job in a top corporate video company which was full of very bright people, many of whom have gone on to do amazing things in the industry.

These people seemed so articulate and well-informed, I suddenly lost confidence in my ability to hold my own. Amongst other things, I began to go through the dictionary in our family home and make a note of impressive words to bolster my vocabulary. I went one letter at a time - it took ages and like all these things, it didn’t solve the problem.

When I ended up going to church in my mid-thirties, the problem literally disappeared - amongst my newfound community I felt more than enough and in fact, I developed a love of words and their true meanings. So I’m now an etymology nut but for fun not fear.

I’m obsessed with war and I don’t know why.

I think I just keep wondering - ‘how would I cope?’. So I’m hugely inspired by those who have experienced it.

Wilfred Owen became my favourite war poet at school. When you have to learn great poems by heart, you tend to love them forever.

I found the original manuscript of “Dulce et Decorum est” in the British Library, which he had penned in hospital whilst recovering from his wounds. It was full of his scribbled amendments which took my breath away. To see such a great thing being formed by its author.