Reading between the lines

‘Voltaire and the Sun King rolled into one’ is how Elizabeth Longford has described her Oxford tutor Maurice Bowra.

If the promoters of the e-book have their way, personal libraries of the future will consist of intricate cyber-memories holding thousands of volumes conjured up at the touch of a finger, while the reader, bounded in an electronic nutshell, will count himself a king of infinite space. Gone will be the pleasures of sitting in a book-lined room watched by the ghosts of the garrulous dead, gone the unique feeling of companionship and awe that the accumulation of books over a lifetime can inspire. Gone too the harmless and prurient delight of peering through someone else’s shelves in order to catch a glimpse of his secrets and foibles. Fortunately, I believe, such a future is yet but a glint in the technology-mongers’ eye and, however strong the competition, I trust that our homes will house books for however long we continue to claim the tag of homo sapiens.