A conversation across the centuries

E-books are going to win. Anyone who’s seen a bus or a train carriage or a café lately knows that: Kindles everywhere, as though they’re breeding. And that’s as it should be. Stand in the way of convenient technology which people want, and you’re in the same position as every refusenik from the Luddites to the newspaper unions of the 1980s. But before the printed book takes its final bow, and retreats to its status as endearing novelty, let’s take a look at the sort of experience we’re going to miss.

A friend recently came across a single volume from an 18th century Spectator series, and knowing of my scribblings for said organ and its website, gave me the book as a present. A little detective work among the dealers in London’s Cecil Court put the leather-bound beauty somewhere in the 1780s. (A full set of eight was going for £160 — my lonely soldier, of course, is worthless.)