I don’t just mean the stories inside books, I mean the books themselves and the unfathomable loveliness of holding them in your hands, poring over the handwritten inscriptions and pretty bookplates, sniffing the pages and wondering who owned them before you.
If I wasn’t needed at home – and if I had endless money, as opposed to next to no money – I’d do nothing but tour the world’s bookstores and treat myself to treasured first editions and scruffy, well-thumbed, neglected paperbacks from years gone by.