Happy New Year and, even more fervently – from my standpoint as a natural-born and then heavily-nurtured bookworm – happy National Year of Reading to you!

For thus has the year of our Lord 2026 been designated by the National Literary Trust, to encourage what statistics have recently shown to be a skill at risk of becoming if not lost then at least arcane far sooner than we’d ever have believed possible.

Reading for pleasure is becoming less common across all ages but especially, as you might expect, given their digital nativity, amongst children and younger adults.

The latest annual survey by the National Literacy Trust found that only a third of people between the ages of eight and 18 said they enjoyed reading in their spare time, and just a fifth of them reported reading something daily. A few years ago, the Progress in International Reading Report by the Department of Education found that, while the international average of children reporting that they “very much liked” reading was 46 per cent, England’s crotch fruit came in at just 29 per cent.

The keen-eyed amongst you may already have spotted that there has been an omission. What is meant by “reading for pleasure”? It it really the reading of books for pleasure?........

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