I am glad that BBC Radio 4 is producing a series called How Reading Made Us, presented by the subtle, super-literate Times of London columnist James Marriott. I must declare an interest. Roughly 98 percent of my earnings over 45 years have depended on the fact that plenty of people like reading. Now we are thinking harder, however, about the fact that form affects substance. The idea of an encyclopedia, for example, as developed (from classical roots) in the 18th century, was that all needful knowledge on a particular subject could be assembled and consulted in a book or series of books. With AI, there is little need for this form. The form of a book, which often seemed so compendious, can now seem cumbersome. Fiction, too, is affected by form. Dickens’s novels were shaped by the fact they were part-works in magazines such as Household Words. Few would write or read a novel in that way now. Netflix achieves the desired effect more conveniently. That, in turn, means that people write different types of novels. Could the very word “book” become out of date, as is beginning to happen to the word “newspaper”? If it no longer requires physical form, does it need to be shaped and written in the same way at all?

What about the Bible? Its very name implies there is only one true book (or collection of books). The sacred duty to agree what it must contain and – for Protestants at least – to read it, shows that books........

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