Anyone even slightly interested in the business of books knows that when publishers or booksellers get together there’s nothing they like to talk about more than “the reasons why no one reads books anymore”.  This is something that never changes.  Catastrophe is always just around the corner and some fiendish and irresistible foe is lurking, ready to make books a thing of the past and to transform reading into a quaint, old-fashioned pastime like Morris dancing.  The cause of the unavoidable disaster changes from time to time.  Radio, television, the Internet, video games: all at various times have been the harbingers of disaster.  Today’s trope is that we all have too little time and too many competing distractions to read anything longer than a tweet or a news headline.  Our diminishing attention span is the new thing that’s going to kill writing, reading, publishing, bookselling, libraries and just about everything else.  To quote Private Frazer in Dad’s Army (look it up if you’re not British), “We’re all doomed”.

Having just been to the Jaipur Literature Festival, I’m here to tell you something: you can sleep easy because the love affair between readers and their books is as intense and as passionate as at any time in human history.  More than 500,000 people are expected to attend this year’s Festival and the numbers have grown year-on-year since it was first held back in 2008.  That’s half a million people coming together to listen to authors and talk about books. The Festival usually draws some of the world’s most famous writers and this year was no exception.  Germaine Greer, Ben Okri, Colson Whitehead, and many others talked about writing and books in front of huge audiences on the lawns of Diggi Palace in bright winter sunshine and an occasional hailstorm.  It was the most extraordinary and joyous celebration of storytelling and a reminder, if reminders were needed, of the timeless appeal and power of books.