No, the photograph is not the senior partner at home.  Nor the junior partner, either, in case you're wondering (cheek!).

The gorgeous model library above can be seen in the model village at Bourton-on-the-Water in Gloucestershire.  We visited the UK earlier in the year for various family events, and found time to visit Bourton and model Bourton.

It struck me that home libraries are becoming increasingly rare.  I live happily surrounded by books both professionally and personally.  However, people I visit seem increasingly to be divesting themselves of their book collection.  To me that's like throwing away old friends.  As I type this (not in a posh library like the one above, but in an office full of mis-matched furniture) I have books on shelves behind my desk, just like the red-faced gentleman above.  Most of them are of use to me in my work, but I'm strangely reassured by their presence.

At home I've still got books which I've owned since childhood.  Just looking at the covers of them reminds me of my father reading to me or, when I could read more fluently, me escaping into its pages.  Somehow the children I read about were allowed to do far more things, and do them without adult supervision, than I was.  I re-read one of them the other day and it had lost none of its magic, not least because that page still had the stain from the cocoa which I'd sploshed onto it, and that page was creased where I'd tried to hang onto it to read after lights out.

Looking around today I can think of houses where I don't see a book at all.  A French teacher I know, doesn't own a French dictionary.  At least not on paper.  Bookless houses worry me.  Part of that is professional, obviously; we sell books.  But privately I miss them:  to me a house without books is like a body without a soul.

Online books are fine, great, useful.  But what do you do if you have a power cut or there's no signal?  A friend of mine announced proudly that she'd got rid of all her books and transferred them to her tablet.  Much more convenient she said.  Then she dropped it in the bath...

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