I love the word ‘library’ and feel sorry for the French who wasted their equivalent on a mere stationery shop and cornered themselves into using the nobly historical yet somewhat dry term ‘bibliothéque’. I feel that my own books make up a library but would scarcely constitute a bibliothéque.

I am temporarily separated from the bulk of my books and thus more keenly aware than ever of their importance to me. It is not only the contents that I miss but the visible presence of them. I can picture the shelves and the configurations of buckrams and dust-jackets: in my mind’s eye particular books can be located. I see Bergson’s Creative Evolution there next to Wittgenstein’s Tractatus. Shall I ever read it again? I doubt it; yet the sight of it, austere on its appropriate shelf reminds me that in some sense what lies within its covers is also to be found within my head, although I cannot quote a word of it. Books do furnish a mind. The visual array of them is a house of memory in the form of a mnemonic of evocative spines.