Emilia Clarke has shared the book that helped her grieve when her father died

Game of Thrones star Emilia Clarke has this week revealed the book that helped her get over the death of her father four years ago.

She's always been vocal about her love of literature, sharing that she's normally unhappy if she's not halfway through a good page turner.

This week, when appearing on BBC's Cultural Frontline programme, she opened up about how one essay, in particular, really helped her deal with the grief she felt when she lost a parent.

She said: "I normally live in bookshops and I read all the time. I am unhappy if I'm not in the middle of a book."

This comes the same week as fellow Game of Thrones star Natalie Dormer has shared the happy news that she gave birth to a secret lockdown baby.

She went on to talk about Why Didn't You Just Do What You Were Told? by author Jenny Diski. It's non-fiction, discussing the very essence of human nature.

"Without being able to walk into a bookshop I signed up to a book subscription service, so every month I get delivered a book and I get very excited that I don't know what it is," the actress shared.

"This was one of them. I was so absorbed by her writing it was unreal."

She loved the book so much, she shared it on her Instagram platform, where she has a whopping 27 million followers. To her fans, she described the book as 'funny, heart-breaking, insightful and wise.'

Dr Ian Patterson, the partner of Diski who sadly passed away from lung cancer in 2016, saw the post and has said to Clarke since: "It was very wonderful to see the picture of you holding the book, and I suddenly was switched back to when Jenny was still alive and we were watching Game of Thrones," Patterson recently told Clarke via the BBC World Service.

One particular essay in the book, The Natural Death Centre, was Clarke's favourite, and helped her overcome the grief of losing her own father four years ago.

She said: "The Natural Death Centre had me howling with laughter and this was obviously pre-her diagnosis."

In the essay, Diski contemplates the passing of her own Dad when she was just 17 years old.

"The way that she writes about it, it makes you feel OK," said the actress,

"I lost my Dad four years ago and it still feels like it was yesterday. And since his death I think about death a lot and I consider his a lot. And so to read her take on it was just really tonic for the soul."