World Book Day - good luck to all Northumberland schools taking part

Heddon on the Wall First Schools and Ponteland Richard Coates both invited me in today to be part of World Book Day. The idea is a great one, and fundamentally designed to enthuse kids with a love of reading; sadly I am stuck working all day in Westminster but I have set out a few thoughts below I would have shared.
http://worldbookday.com

Favourite books: too many to name but Birdsong and For whom the Bell tolls are both amazing reads that have moved me.
Best opening lines: here are 4 to try that I would have told the children of:

"It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness, it was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity, it was the season of Light, it was the season of Darkness, it was the spring of hope, it was the winter of despair". —Charles Dickens, A Tale of Two Cities (1859)

"It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession of a good fortune, must be in want of a wife". —Jane Austen, Pride and Prejudice(1813)

"Many years later, as he faced the firing squad, Colonel Aureliano Buendía was to remember that distant afternoon when his father took him to discover ice." —Gabriel García Márquez, One Hundred Years of Solitude 

"It was a bright cold day in April, and the clocks were striking thirteen". —George Orwell, 1984