There’s a new trend which sees influencers taking selfies of themselves with books they aren’t even reading. Herald columnist Neil Mackay rages against the horror.

When I went to university in 1988, I was the gauchest creature imaginable. I was thrust among rich kids who had travelled the world when I’d been no further than the seaside, eaten foods I’d never heard of, and visited art galleries to see paintings I’d only ogled in books.

I was a working-class lad who loved literature and was so full of excitement at the future that it took a while to realise there was a huge social divide between me and many of my classmates.

I started dating a girl from the Cotswolds. Her dad was a stockbroker. To me, that meant he wore a bowler hat. I told you I was naive.

Come the end of the first term - or Michaelmas, as it was called with absurd pretension - she invited me to her home for the holidays.

My brain boggled at what met me. She had stables - stables! - for her horses. There was a lake in their garden. A swimming pool in her house. Her dad had a billiard room. Some sort of servant was running around.

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If I was a mercenary sociopath I’d have married her, used her family wealth to become Prime Minister, and be ruling Britain as a despot. However, reader, I fell in love with a working-class girl, married her, and remain happily in love to this day.

My girlfriend’s dad, in an attempt, I guess, to connect with this strange yet seemingly intelligent oik seducing his daughter, told me I’d the run of his library if I wished. Oh my god, I thought. A whole library, for me!

I wandered down to this Holy of Holies, in a distant wing of their Tudor mansion, and started rummaging through the shelves.

I was into medieval poetry - yip, that’s the kind of weirdo I was: punk music,........

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