In the centre of Durham last week, at the far end of the old indoor market, my son and I hit pay dirt. Down past the fishmonger and the cleaning supplies, past the dead-eyed teens suffering through their summer jobs, right against the market’s back wall: Jim’s Vintage Toys.

Die-cast Dinkys, Napoleonic soldiers with tufted hats, stormtroopers, old-school Ferraris. Within 20 seconds my ten-year-old had a car in each sticky hand and had dropped, sniper-style to the floor into that universal boy play-position almost never seen in girls: bum up, shoulders twisted, cheek flat to the floor. Another few seconds and he was unreachable, sunk deep into an imaginary race.

Young children have no way of understanding that a talking toy isn’t real

Young children have no way of understanding that a talking toy isn’t real

I watched as he tranced out, and for just a moment remembered what it was like to play that way: the satisfying feeling of immersion, the happy, burbling dialogue with oneself, and I wondered: what on earth happens to children if they’re starved of this sort of play? Doesn’t it stunt their inner lives? And are there psychologists and neurologists looking into it? I hope to God there are, because the robots are coming for make-believe. A great Terminator army of new interactive toys is marching towards us, aiming to replace the old toys, and it’s not clear to me how childhood imagination survives.

By the till in Jim’s shop was a metal replica of Muffin the Mule, the pantomime horse which made its........

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