Disappearing libraries show the value of 'raw, touchable' history

I mentioned in passing at the end of my last column of 2025 the British affection for our post offices, as integral to communities as churches and pubs.

- with Joe Riley

I also warned of their gradual disappearance and the government's intention to sell off all remaining crown branches.

No sooner had the ink dried, so to speak, when one concerned reader rushed to point out that I had forgotten to list another cornerstone of life as we know it: our libraries.

Those temples of wellbeing, knowledge and still comparative silence. Places with their own smell of paper and ink.

One presumes such solace was to be found in the Great Library of Alexandria, the pinnacle of ancient learning in Egypt.

A vast research centre established by the Ptolemaic dynasty housing hundreds of thousands of papyrus scrolls of global knowledge, fostering huge scientific and philosophical advances.

Other such capitals of culture were eventually established elsewhere.