Having recently confessed to being a Saturday reader of The Daily Mail, I realise that some may interpret this as my having a "No-Brow" tendency. Fear not, my brows are nearly as bushy as those of former Labour Chancellor Dennis Healey, and I aspire to the Mid-High Brow in my general reading: currently Fyodor Dostoevsky's "The Idiot", Nicholas Shaxson's "Treasure Islands", a book of which Lord Healey would surely approve, and "Nature" (see above). Moreover last weekend, I broke the recent habit and purchased the Financial Times once again.
Like the Mail, the FT has joined the debate about the future of Britain's public libraries - from one of which I've loaned "Treasure Islands and also photocopied a Nature article. Columnist Christopher Caldwell predicts their demise: "It is the fate of libraries to die"...because..."The government must focus on necessities and cut frills".
However, set in the context of Shaxson's analysis of "Treasure Islands" or tax havens, at the heart of which are the United Kingdom and the United States, the literary haven of the British, or American, public library seems a curious candidate for the death sentence. For it is precisely this type of institution that provides the citizen with the intellectual resources to adopt a more critical attitude to current affairs, of the kind promoted by the FT, including how governments should regulate and spend money, and otherwise safeguard the public interest.
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