Fiction: The books we say we’ve read

You might expect hefty Russian tome War And Peace to be the book that people are most likely to have lied about reading. 

But children’s favourite Alice’s Adventures In Wonderland by Lewis Carroll is responsible for the most literary fibs, according to a BBC survey.

Those who have struggled to make any headway into Leo Tolstoy’s classic, currently taking centre stage in the Sunday night TV schedule, can take heart that it is still responsible for plenty of deceit, coming fourth on the list of books that we lie to our friends about having read.