I got out my old copy of Jane Eyre, and there was the evidence: 'The fiend pinning down the thief's pack behind him' 'the black horned thing seated aloof on a rock, surveying a distant crowd surrounding a gallows.'

I'd always assumed that Jane was escaping into beautiful avian images, but it turns out that a far more gothic imagination is hidden between the chapters, in a series of sinister miniature engravings. It began a couple of years ago with Jenny Uglow's wonderful biography of the 18th-century engraver Thomas Bewick, whose History of British Birds is the book with which the 10-year-old Jane Eyre diverts herself behind the curtains at Gateshead Hall, until it is hurled at her head by her odious cousin. It was just such a loop that brought me back to Wide Sargasso Sea, one of the great prequels of world literature. For someone who, like me, spends their working life reading in straight lines – what's new, is it any good? – holidays offer the luxury of reading in circles. Where would summer be without a series of reading blogs? This year's subject, 'a book for the beach', might seem limiting, but there are as many sorts of beach holiday as there are books to enjoy on them.

Wide sargasso sea audiobook free