In an age when the e-book has arrived, what price our book shelves and the piles of bound paper volumes that fill them?

  I find it very hard to get rid of books, even though the shelves are full and the floor space is now called into service to take care of the overflow. What is it about a book that is so attractive, that gives it so much more meaning than the electronic equivalent? There is joy in unwrapping a new book, clean, sharp and unread, a gift for our satisfaction and information, something to treasure.

  The historical perspective of the last two thousand years, moving from the handwritten manuscripts through to the illuminated bibles such as the Book of Kells and the Lindisfarne Gospels has led us, through the invention of the printing press, to the explosive spread of the written word through Western Europe and beyond in the last three hundred years, a truly global effect.

  The books of the New Testament give us the story of the life and mission of Jesus of Nazareth. The Acts of the Apostles and letters of Paul give us the measure of his work in those early days of the Christian Mission.

  How sad it is that so often books (and other historical artefacts) are the target of those who seek violent overthrow of a state or a community. Treasures are lost that cannot be replaced, something is taken from the community that is part of its very life, where it came from and how it might go forward. The burning of books has so often been the mark of a totalitarian regime.

  It is because books have this personal narrative that they are passed on as gifts, often after a person has died. There is a simple story recounted by Newman in the Apologia pro vita sua following the death of his friend Hurrell Froude in 1836. He writes “I was asked to select one of his books as a keepsake. I selected Butler’s Analogy; finding it had already been chosen, I looked with some perplexity along the shelves as they stood before me, when an intimate friend at my elbow said, “Take that”. It was the breviary which Hurrell had with him at Barbados. Accordingly, I took it, studied it, wrote my tract from it and have it on my table in constant use till this day.”

  I remembered that story when my own parish priest died some 25 years ago and we were sorting out his books. I was asked what I wanted. It was a volume of his breviary that I took and still use. May he rest in peace.

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